


What to Expect When Your Angel's Expecting

by Zana_Zira



Series: Expect the Unexpected 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angelic Grace, Angelic Lore, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awesome Charlie Bradbury, Babies 'R Us, Caring Dean Winchester, Castiel Has Stolen Grace, Castiel/Dean Winchester Fluff, Castiel/Dean Winchester Pregnancy, Charlie Ships Castiel/Dean Winchester, Charlie Ships It, Claire acts like a little brat, Cravings, Crying Castiel, Dean Dreams of Cas and Pie, Depressed Castiel, Doctors & Physicians, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Embedded Images, Emotional Castiel, Emotional Dean, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Castiel, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Exhaustion, Guilty Castiel, M/M, Maternity Clothing, Men of Letters Bunker, Minor Original Character(s), Mood Swings, Moody Castiel, Morning Sickness, Mpreg, Nausea, Original Character(s), POV Alternating, POV Castiel, POV Dean Winchester, POV Third Person Omniscient, Parental Castiel, Pregnant Castiel, Prenatal Care, References to Depression, References to Metatron, Season/Series 10, Sick Castiel, Stolen Grace, Supportive Dean, Team Free Will, Ultrasound/Sonogram, Unplanned Pregnancy, Vomiting, Worried Dean Winchester, baby shopping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-04-07 10:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4259733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zana_Zira/pseuds/Zana_Zira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 10 AU: Dean couldn't be happier. The Mark of Cain is gone, Castiel has his grace back, and Sam's on friendly terms with him for the first time in 2 years. But as usual, the peace doesn't last long. When Cas suddenly falls ill, Dean learns that even after so many years together, his angel is still full of surprises. Destiel MPreg. </p><p>Updates on the second Saturday of every month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: May 21, 2015

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hi, everyone! So here it is, finally - the grand unveiling of the fic I've been promoting for weeks now! :D
> 
> This story takes place after episode 10x03, and then diverges from canon because instead of failing to remove the Mark, Sam's cure actually eradicated it, returning Dean to normal and leaving Castiel as the only member of Team Free Will who still had a problem to deal with (getting his grace back.)
> 
> The prologue will hopefully do a lot to explain where everything stands, and after that if you still have any questions, please feel free to PM me with them.
> 
> I will be updating this story again tomorrow or Saturday, and once more before July 8th, and after that I will update on the first Thursday of every month. I hope you all will enjoy it! (And I promise the rest of the story will not be nearly this angsty and intense - soon it will be mostly fluff.)

**_May 21, 2015_ **

"Sam, are you sure we're headed the right way?" Dean Winchester asked from the back seat of the Impala as his brother guided the car over a long stretch of gravel trying to pass itself off as a road. He gritted his teeth when the right front tire dipped into yet another pothole, cursing under his breath and trying not to think about what all this abuse might be doing to the suspension. "This place doesn't really seem grand enough for Meta-douche to want to hole up in."

"I'm sure," Sam answered evenly, huffing in frustration as the road forked in two and forced him to consult the map again before deciding which way to go. "I checked and rechecked the directions about ten times before we left. It should be just another half hour."

The three of them had been actively hunting for the angel Metatron, also known as the Scribe of God, since October of 2014, beginning the day after the eldest Winchester was successfully cured of the Mark of Cain. The cunning and egotistical ancient being was responsible for a number of unspeakable evils, one of the most recent being the way he had manipulated Gadreel, the angel responsible for allowing sin to infiltrate the Garden of Eden, into killing one of the Winchesters' closest friends right in front of them. Gadreel had believed Metatron when he promised to restore him to his former power and glory, not realizing that all he really intended to do was use the exiled angel as a way to infiltrate the Winchesters' home and then discard him as soon as he became the new ruler of Heaven. Gadreel had come to his senses at the last moment, saving Castiel and many of Heaven's other angels, but he did so at the cost of his own life.

Meanwhile, Metatron had stayed on Earth to challenge Dean, killing the hunter by stabbing him through the chest with an angel blade. He was eventually captured and imprisoned in Heaven, but the damage had already been done, and only the fact that Dean had been branded with the Mark of Cain had enabled him to eventually come back to the ones who cared about him.

Worst of all, though, in May of 2013 Metatron had stolen Castiel's grace, the very essence of what made him an angel and granted him the extraordinary abilities that set him apart from humans. He had then used it as the final ingredient in a spell that cast every last member of the Heavenly Host out of their homes, starting the long chain reaction that eventually led to Gadreel's treachery and Dean's short stint as a demon.

For several months afterward Castiel had been rendered human, living without a penny to his name and jumping from one homeless shelter to another as he fought to survive in a world where everyone around him might be an enemy angel wearing a human face. Then, in November of 2013, he had been taken prisoner by one of his former brothers, tortured in the hope that he might be able to give them information on Metatron's whereabouts. Desperate, he slit the other angel's throat and took its grace into his own body, using the stolen essence of Heaven to restore himself almost to full strength.

However, angels were not designed to use the essence of their brothers and sisters to sustain their own lives; each angel's essence was unique, with millions of possible variations, and each human vessel was chosen to contain only one specific angel. To force another's grace into it was like forcing a transfusion of the wrong blood type into someone's veins – it might appear to help keep them alive for a short time, but very quickly the foreign blood would clot and harden, starving the body of oxygen and suffocating them from the inside out.

This was what had happened to Castiel. The stolen grace he bore inside his body had been gradually poisoning him for a little over a year and a half, the sickness chipping away at more of his strength every day like a deadly cancer. It had begun slowly at first, so slowly that even Castiel hadn't felt anything different about himself except a tendency to become tired more quickly and a permanent loss of his ability to fly. By the previous October, when Sam had asked for his help in locating the demonic version of Dean that had been brought back by the Mark, the angel had developed a hacking cough and a nearly constant fever, although he ignored any discomfort they caused him in favor of finding his longtime lover and bringing him home where he belonged.

Once he knew Dean was safe, though, it was like Castiel's body finally realized how much strain it was under, and all the fight seemed to drain out of him little by little until he was left as weak as a newborn kitten. Ever since that day he had been plagued by endless fevers that left him constantly chilled and exhausted and a harsh, hacking cough that had caused him to spit up alarming amounts of blood on more than one occasion. The two hunters did everything they could to keep him comfortable, but it was useless. Medicines had no effect on any of his symptoms, which was to be expected since this was not a human ailment but was still extremely distressing. Even sleeping on Dean's special memory foam mattress, which the hunter often compared to lying on a cloud, couldn't do anything to alleviate the near-constant aches and spasms that assaulted Castiel's muscles and bones.

After a while, all three of them came to the painful realization that Castiel really was dying, and the only way to stop it was to find whatever remained of his grace and return it to him.

With that in mind the Winchesters began searching every corner of the Men of Letters' archives for a way to track down Castiel's grace, and hopefully Metatron with it, so they could put a stop to this whole screwed-up mess that had been their lives for the past two years. And finally, after months and months of fruitless searching, they'd succeeded in finding a spell that looked like it could reveal the location of the remnants of Castiel's power. The spell had shown them a place somewhere in Arkansas, out in the mountainous, heavily forested areas where no one lived. The three of them set out early the next morning, Sam driving so that Dean could stay in the back with his angel and keep him as calm and comfortable as possible. And the older Winchester, for his part, did his best not to dwell on exactly how unlikely it was that he would ever recover if Cas didn't make it through this.

A strangled cough drew Dean out of his daydreams, and his gaze flicked down to where Castiel lay curled up in the seat with his head resting in his lap. He was hot and drenched in sweat, his reddened cheeks the only spots of color on his ashen face. He trembled incessantly despite being covered with two blankets, and when the car hit another rough patch in the road he moaned softly and shuddered from head to toe, curling his fingers into the edge of Dean's jacket as if begging him to make the pain stop. The moment those over-bright blue eyes began to open Dean leaned forward and shushed him, carding his fingers through Cas's damp black hair and muttering soothing nonsense to him until he drifted back into a fitful sleep.

Once he was sure the angel was resting again, Dean looked up at his brother and in a small, frightened voice said, "I hope to God our intel was right, Sammy. I don't think Cas is gonna be able to hold on long enough for us to start back at square one."

Sam nodded and swallowed hard, staring fixedly at the road in front of him as he pressed the pedal down harder. "I know. But he's going to be okay, Dean. After all, he's Cas. I'm pretty sure he's pulled through more stuff that should have killed him than even we have. And besides, he's got us with him. We're not about to let him go without a fight."

Dean said nothing in response, and five minutes passed in heavy silence. Then suddenly Cas's eyes shot open and he sucked in a wheezy gasp of air, breaking into a fit of coughing and gripping Dean's shirt tighter as he gagged on his own breath. Dean helped him sit up and kissed his temple, gently patting his back until the hacking stopped and then using the pad of his thumb to wipe away the trickle of blood that had run down his lips and chin. A moment later Castiel sighed and slumped against Dean's side and Sam turned his attention back to the road, unable to look into the mirror anymore when he saw the shining trails of tears running silently down his brother's cheeks.

_***DeanCastiel*** _

When they finally reached the location Sam had circled on the map, an old abandoned barn on the edge of an even older stretch of abandoned farmland, a change immediately seemed to come over the three men. The air itself felt heavier, charged with a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and desperate hope, and the sky looked almost like it had darkened solely in response to what it knew what was about to transpire. Even Castiel seemed to sense it because the moment the car pulled in through a gap between two rotten fence posts, both of which had probably been strung with barbed wire at some point, he woke up and stared straight ahead at their destination as if trying to see through the walls to what lay beyond.

"Dean. Sam," he rasped, his fever-bright eyes suddenly clearer than they had been in weeks. "My grace is being held here. I can sense it."

Sam turned off the engine and then twisted his body around to look at the angel, his expression guardedly hopeful. "Are you sure, Cas? How do you know it isn't a fake?"

Castiel paused for a moment, rolling his eyes upward while he thought of the right words to explain, and then answered, "The best comparison I can think of is if you had had one of your hands cut off, and then someone held it up in front of you and asked whether it was yours or not. You wouldn't stop recognizing it as part of your body just because it was no longer attached to your wrist, would you? It's the same with my grace, but the connection is even stronger. It's as vital a part of myself as a human's heart or brain, and no one, even Metatron, could create a copy of it that would resonate with me so strongly."

Once he had finished speaking his head dropped almost to his chest, and he heaved in greedy gulps of air like even that much talking had completely exhausted him.

"Whoa, Cas, you okay?" Dean asked in alarm, one hand coming to rest lightly on his shoulder. He still wasn't used to seeing this once-mighty creature of God reduced to such helplessness. It was hard to believe this was the same warrior of Heaven who had battled his way through endless ranks of demons in Hell to rescue a single human soul, not once but  _twice_ ; the same one who had been reduced to molecular dust by Raphael and blown to pieces by Lucifer, fallen from Heaven's favor rather than be forced to fight against Dean, and been pulled into Purgatory by raging Leviathans, and had lived to tell the tale each and every time. To see him as he was now… it was almost more than Dean could stand.

Castiel nodded weakly in response to Dean's question, reaching into the sleeve of his coat and retrieving a long, triangular silver blade, which he held up and offered to the hunter.

"I'm… alright…" he panted, still too proud to admit the extent of his pain or weakness despite the fact that he had grown paler just from the effort of speaking. "Leave me. You have… to go and finish this if I'm to have any chance of survival. I'll be safe… here until then."

Dean hesitated for a moment and then nodded, taking the blade from Cas and giving him a soft, chaste kiss before he straightened and backed away from the open door. "Okay. We'll be right back, Cas. And don't you dare croak while we're gone, you understand? If you do, I swear to God I'll kill you."

The angel chuckled softly, recognizing the way Dean always hid worry beneath empty threats of violence, and did his best to give a reassuring smile despite not having any idea what his physical health might have to do with the mating calls of bullfrogs. "I promise I'll do everything I can not to 'croak' while you're in there, Dean."

"Good." Dean stood up a little straighter and took a deep breath before tucking the angel blade into the waistband of his jeans, just beside his gun. "Alright, Sammy. Let's go deep fry this dick's wings."

Castiel pulled the Impala's rear door shut and kept his face neutral as he watched them go, suddenly plagued with an unexpected feeling of loneliness and wondering – not for the first time – if he would truly be able to keep his promise of staying alive until they returned.

_***DeanCastiel*** _

Once they actually reached the place where Castiel's grace was being held, taking it back turned out to be much easier than the Winchesters had originally planned.

It took barely any time at all to pick the rusty locks on the splintering barn doors (although they honestly could have probably just kicked them in with very little effort.) There were symbols drawn in blood across all four outer walls, most of which Dean recognized as sigils meant to keep angels from gaining entry. It made him glad they hadn't brought Castiel. Even if he had somehow found a way to force his way into the building, these wards were severe enough to be dangerous for a healthy angel to pass through; he couldn't imagine what they might do to one as severely compromised as Cas was.

Mixed in with the angel repelling sigils were a few more obscure symbols, most of them aimed at banishing demons and other monsters. Surprisingly, though, it didn't seem that the one guarding this place had had the foresight to protect it against humans, likely because they thought no human would be interested in a run-down place like this. Big mistake.

Once the two hunters were inside, it took them only a few minutes of looking around before they practically stumbled onto their target. The man looked to be around thirty-five or forty, short and a little fat with more than a few traces of gray in his dark hair and moustache. He was sitting on a rickety milking stool behind one of the horse stalls at the end of the center aisle, twirling a glowing glass vial on a chain around the end of his finger, and he looked almost bored as he watched the two them approach.

"Dean. Sam. Good to see you," he drawled, standing slowly and stretching as if he was just getting out of bed, and not being stared down by two people who wanted to kill him on the spot. "I suppose you're here about Castiel's grace?"

"You're damn right," Dean growled, taking a step forward and feeling his fury burning hotter when the angel didn't react with even the slightest bit of fear. "So you can either hand it over and I'll kill you quickly, or you can try to keep it and I'll take it anyway, and then rip your wings out of your back before I filet you alive. What's it gonna be?"

The angel chuckled, rolling his eyes like this was all a very cheesy joke, and then in an instant his face turned hard and cold, his eyes glinting with malice as he sized up the two men before him. Before the Winchesters could react, he had lifted one hand and effortlessly thrown them backwards, sending Dean flying into a shelf filled with old glass bottles of expired veterinary drugs and Sam crashing through one of the walls of a nearby milking stall.

"Or," he added lowly, slipping the vial of grace into his jacket as they staggered to their feet and advanced toward him once again, "I could kill both of you right here and now, like Lord Metatron has wanted to do for some time now." He waited until the Winchesters were almost close enough to touch him and then laughed, giving them a look that said he clearly viewed them as nothing more than ants.

"You boys may think you know a thing or two about angels, but I guarantee you that I'm nothing like that defective reject you two seem so happy to associate with. Lord Metatron is destined to be the one true God, and those who serve him must all embody absolute perfection. I am more powerful than Castiel could ever be, and that is why I was chosen to guard his grace. So you have two choices. You can get on your knees and beg for my forgiveness –"

His words were cut off as Dean lunged forward, drawing the angel blade from his belt and shoving it through the vessel's chest in one fluid motion. The man's eyes and mouth opened wide in horrified shock, and then a violent blue light exploded from his body before he crumpled lifelessly to the floor.

"Or I could just do that," Dean said with a derisive snort, wiping the blood from Castiel's blade on the edge of the dead angel's shirt and kicking a small clump of dusty hay into the corpse's face. "Seriously, what is it with these friggin' angels and their super-villain monologues? We should've started killing them in mid-sentence a long time ago."

"No kidding." Sam crouched down and pushed the man onto his back, searching through his jacket pockets until he found the small glass vial and pulled it out. He opened his hand and offered the glowing vial to Dean, who took it eagerly and immediately started making his way out of the open double-doors. "But is it just me, or did this seem a little too easy?"

Dean hummed low in his throat, still focused on the swirling ribbons of light that danced and swam around the inside of the glass tube with every move he made. "Yeah, maybe, but I don't care. Even if it is some kind of trap, right now I'm just worried about patching Cas up. We'll figure the rest out later, like we always do."

"Right," Sam agreed.

As they neared the car, Dean froze, his eyes narrowing as he spotted a strange mark on the right rear window. A moment later he realized it was an enormous smear of blood, and his heart felt like it might stop. "Oh shit, Cas!" he shouted, and without another word he was running full-tilt toward the Impala, Sam following only inches behind him.

Within seconds he was yanking the door open so that he could get to the angel, and the sight that met his eyes made his heart sink down to his ankles.

Castiel was lying curled up on the seat, right where they had left him, gasping and struggling so hard for breath that he didn't have the strength to look up and acknowledge their presence. A puddle of dark crimson surrounded his head like some horrible parody of a halo, dripping over the edge of the vinyl seats to the footwells and covering the palms of his hands. After a moment, Dean came to the horrified realization that the smear on the window was a bloodied handprint, likely from Cas trying to open the door and ask them for help but being unable to do so.

During the precious few seconds that he had spent piecing all of this together, Dean had already reached into the car and grabbed Castiel by the armpits, hauling him out onto the grass and helping him stay upright as he continued to hack and spit up bright red blood onto the ground in front of him.

"D… De…" Castiel choked, pawing desperately at the hunter's chest as his eyes begged him  _"Help me, please! I can't breathe!"_

"I know, Cas, it's okay, easy," Dean said with as much gentleness as he could force through his own panic. "We got it, buddy, we got it. Here."

He hurriedly flipped the top off of the vial, tipping it into Cas's open mouth and holding his breath as it rushed down his throat like a cloud of glowing smoke. Several tense seconds passed, and then his whole body bucked upward, his back arching as became enveloped in a blinding white light that radiated outward from the middle of his chest. Sam and Dean closed their eyes, unable to stand the intensity of the light, and covered their ears as Castiel's true voice rang out and threatened to shatter their eardrums.

Just seconds later it was all over. Dean cautiously opened his eyes, blinking several times to clear away the colorful dots swimming across his vision, and once he could see again he sucked in a deep breath, an enormous smile spreading across his lips as he gazed upon his angel.

Castiel was once again standing tall and strong, stretching and flexing the muscles in his back and shoulders as if reacquainting himself with the feeling of having healthy, functional wings. His skin had lost all traces of fever and pallor, returning to its usual light, slightly-tanned tone; his dark locks were back to looking like they normally did, clean and shiny but eternally mussed in a way that Dean had affectionately labeled his "permanent sex hair," and his clothes had returned to their usual state of being both completely spotless and slightly rumpled at the same time.

In about two seconds Castiel found himself being crushed between two very strong pairs of arms in a double bear hug. He chuckled and returned Sam's hug first, giving him a few pats on the back that felt only slightly awkward after all these years, and then turned his attention to Dean just in time to find himself being kissed more desperately and lovingly than he could ever remember. He returned the gesture with equal enthusiasm, and even though it only lasted a few seconds, he was breathless by the time they parted.

The moment they separated Dean wrapped an arm around him, giving a loud, relieved sigh and patting the hood of the Impala as he opened the driver's side door. "Well what the hell are we still doing here?" he asked cheerfully. "Cas is better, there are steaks at home waiting to be cooked, and there's a Game of Thrones marathon on HBO tonight. C'mon, let's get our asses back to the bunker already!"

Sam hurriedly obeyed, hopping into the passenger seat as Dean turned the key in the ignition and started the engine, and Castiel gave the side of the Impala a gentle tap that instantly removed all traces of the bloody mess he had made before sliding into the backseat. After months without his wings, he honestly wanted nothing more than to fly himself home, soaring through the skies for hours until the Impala reached Lebanon. But when he saw how genuinely cheerful Dean was, the way he was smiling in a way Cas hadn't seen from him in years, he just couldn't bring himself to leave them.

Feeling content in a way he hadn't in any recent memory, Castiel closed his eyes and allowed himself to doze off, the sound of the Impala's tires sailing over the long, dark highway lulling him into a dreamless sleep.

****


	2. July 2, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> A/N: Alright, guys, here's the next chapter, as promised! I'm sorry it came out so late - I meant to have it up yesterday, but I got stuck with some writer's block on the last half. The next chapter should be up before July 8th, and after that I'll be moving to the "first Thursday of every month" update schedule so I can work on some one-shots. :)

**_July 2, 2015_ **

_BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT! BZ –_

Dean Winchester groaned and snatched his phone off of the nightstand by his bed, swiping his finger across the screen to silence his alarm clock and then turning it off with a sigh. Time to get up already? Where did the hours go?

Smacking his lips to try to get rid of the feeling that a cat had slept in his mouth during the night, he slowly sat up and stretched, yawning so wide it made his eyes water and his jaw pop. Then, careful not to disturb the dark-haired lump curled up beside him underneath the plush green comforter, he got up and slipped into a pair of lounge pants and an old T-shirt; after all, just because Sam knew and accepted what he and Castiel got up to in the privacy of their own bedroom, it didn't mean he wanted to see the evidence on full display the morning after.

Once he was dressed, Dean carefully crept through the bedroom door and swung it shut behind him before padding down the hall toward the kitchen. Making breakfast was part of the daily routine he'd fallen into soon after finding the bunker, and it had been easy enough to adapt after Castiel moved in with them. Every morning he woke up at seven, long before Sam or Cas usually thought about getting out of bed, and made his way to the kitchen so he could start fixing breakfast. (He'd learned very quickly that angel or not, Cas was an absolute bear if woken up before eight o'clock for anything but an emergency, so he usually opted to just leave him alone.)

With practiced ease he retrieved all the ingredients he would need, barely making a sound as he pulled spoons and spatulas and pans from their respective drawers and cabinets. When he and Sam had moved into the bunker two years ago he had only known how to make easy things, like scrambled eggs and half-burnt toast. After spending over two years experimenting in his own kitchen, though, he'd become comfortable enough with the cookware to graduate to healthier, tastier things like French toast, scrambled egg whites sprinkled with chives and sea salt, and homemade oatmeal packed with chunks of fresh fruit. Weirdly, the older Winchester didn't mind eating healthy food when he cooked it himself, and Sam adored it, so it was a win-win.

Until recently Castiel had only half-participated in mealtimes, joining the two brothers at the table and making conversation but never actually eating anything. This hadn't bothered them, though. It was a well-known fact that angels had no need for sustenance (or sleep, for that matter, although Castiel had readily adapted to that practice after realizing how comfortable Dean's memory foam mattress was) and except for that single unfortunate time when Famine had forced him into gorging himself on hundreds of pounds of red meat, he had never shown any interest in the consumption of food. He claimed that his senses were so fine-tuned that the taste of food was overwhelming to the point of being disgusting, so even though it certainly wouldn't hurt him to eat – the food just sat in his belly until his grace magicked it away or something, Dean really didn't know how angelic digestion worked – the blue-eyed man didn't really see the point.

Ever since he'd gotten his own grace back, though, Cas seemed to have inexplicably gained enough control over his hypersensitive taste buds to begin desiring Dean's cooking, and the hunter was more than happy to offer it to him. After all, it sure made mealtimes a lot less awkward when one of them didn't have to sit there staring blankly at the others' plates while they dug in. Plus, if he was being honest, there was something about cooking for Cas and Sam that made him truly happy. Sappy as it might sound, he felt like he was a provider again, which he hadn't truly gotten to experience since his brother was a little kid. It was a welcome change compared to his usual role as an underappreciated hunter, hated by monsters and even some humans who didn't understand exactly how much he did for them each and every day.

Sometimes it felt weird to think about how domestic he'd recently become (Sam had even teased him about it once, but shut up pretty quickly after Dean threatened to stop making his favorite grilled chicken wraps for lunch.) Mostly, though, it was a good feeling. Other than his short time with Lisa and Ben, Dean had never really had the opportunity to do the things that regular people took for granted every day of their lives. Just being able to sleep in the same bed each night beside the person he loved, cook all of their meals in his own kitchen – hell, just to have a place they could actually call  _home_  – it all made him feel like he'd finally done right by his family. And yeah, maybe the person he'd fallen in love with was a technically-genderless fallen angel who happened to be occupying a male vessel, which wasn't exactly normal and kind of ruled any future children out of the equation, but he didn't care. Dean loved his tiny little family, and he wouldn't change one thing about it for anything in the world.

He remained lost in thought as he plated up the last of that morning's food – which consisted of scrambled eggs, bacon, and an unbelievably tall stack of thick blueberry pancakes – until he heard the soft slapping of bare feet coming down the hallway toward him. A moment later Castiel rounded the corner, wearing one of Dean's old Metallica T-shirts and a pair of well-worn plaid pajama bottoms that had probably once been Sam's, judging by the way the fabric pooled around his feet. As he came further into the kitchen he yawned, throwing his arms around Dean and nuzzling into his shoulder with a drowsy snuffle.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," Dean muttered, chuckling at his wild bed hair and running his fingers through it before wrapping an arm around him. "I wasn't gonna wake you for breakfast for another half hour. What're you doin' out of bed so early?"

"I smelled pancakes," Cas mumbled, lifting his head from Dean's shoulder and staring at the pile of blueberry-filled discs with an almost predatory gleam in his eye.

Dean rolled his eyes, reaching into the cupboard for a plate and watching as Cas piled it with three huge pancakes and then proceeded to completely drown them in honey before tucking into them like he was starving to death.

"You know Cas, if I didn't know any better I'd think you only stuck around for my pancakes."

Castiel gave an amused snort. "Don't be ridiculous, Dean," he muttered, his words muffled behind a mouthful of honey-soaked dough. "I stay for your burgers, too."

"You're hilarious," Dean deadpanned with a roll of his eyes before giving the angel a quick peck on his sugary-sweet lips. "Now go sit down and eat. It's why we have a table in the first place. I'll join you in a sec."

Cas's lips quirked up in a small smirk and he strode over to the table, stifling another yawn before returning to his breakfast. A few minutes later Sam shuffled in, mumbling a sleepy hello to the angel before pouring himself a cup of coffee and accepting a plate full of food from Dean with a grateful smile. Finally the eldest Winchester joined them as well, picking up a strip of bacon and ripping a bite out of it like he had a grudge against it before turning his attention to the other two men at the table.

"How is it?" he asked as Sam cut off a large piece of pancake and dipped it lightly into a tiny bowl of syrup beside his plate.

"'s good," the younger hunter answered immediately, stabbing the tines of his fork through a fat blueberry that had broken free of its cakey confines and rolled across his plate. "And you even used real blueberries? Wow. When did you turn into Martha Stewart, Dean?"

"Shut it," Dean snapped without any real heat. "Besides, Martha's got the right idea; powdered pancake mix is for amateurs."

Sam snorted, trying and failing to hide his smirk behind a sip of coffee. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you say, Aunt Jemima." He took another long gulp and set his mug down, steepling his hands in front of him on the tabletop as his expression turned serious. "I think I might have found us a hunt last night."

"Is it local?" Castiel asked, intrigued.

Immediately after the angel's recent brush with death, Dean had decided it might be time for them to take a break and pull back from the front lines for a while. The three men had been primarily working from inside the bunker ever since, using the Men of Letters' enormous archive of supernatural lore to provide assistance to hunters across the United States a la Bobby Singer. It had been a little bit of a difficult adjustment at first, since even though the Winchesters enjoyed having a permanent home they still weren't used to remaining there without going on a hunt for more than a week or two at a time. But eventually everyone had settled comfortably into the role of "hunter dispatch," content to leave the more mundane monsters to others for once and taking only local cases, like a vengeful spirit that had been haunting a home in Topeka and a small vampire nest on the outskirts of Salina.

It didn't hurt that Castiel was essentially an endless fountain of knowledge, able to recall bits of occult lore that were never even written in books or correct things that the Men of Letters' research had gotten wrong. He wasn't quite socially adept enough to answer the phone directly, but he didn't seem to mind, willingly passing whatever information he could through the Winchesters and saving more than one hunter's life in the process.

"Man, please tell me it's not another poltergeist," Dean grumbled as he shoveled a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth. "I'm still sore from the one we took out last month." He absentmindedly brought his hand up to rub at his left shoulder, wincing at the memory of being thrown into a metal bookcase hard enough to dislocate it.

"Yes, it's local, and no, it's not a poltergeist," Sam answered both of them at once, standing up and retrieving a thin Manilla folder from the edge of the kitchen counter and setting it down in the middle of the table. "I found an article in the paper yesterday about a bunch of murders out in Leavenworth, all within the last three days. The police are on high alert but they haven't been able to pin down who they think might be doing this. And it took a little digging, but when I hacked into the police station's database, I found a report from a witness, a neighbor to one of the murder victims. She claimed that she knew the murderer, and said her name was Mindy Owens."

He reached forward and flipped open the folder, revealing a slightly blurry picture of a woman in her mid-thirties, with dark brown hair and eyes and a small mole in the corner of her mouth. "The only thing is, I looked up Mindy Owens, and she's been missing for almost a year now. Her husband filed a missing persons report eleven months ago, but no one's found anything on her this whole time."

"Hmm," Dean grunted, taking a swig of his coffee and another bite of bacon before voicing his thoughts. "Sounds like demon possession to me. They're pretty much always the ones to blame when people go missing and then come back psycho."

"Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Either way, Leavenworth's not far from here – about an hour outside of Topeka. If we hurry, we can probably make it there by one o'clock."

"Sounds like a plan. I'm more than ready for a little action. Cas, you ready to smite some evil sons of bitches?"

Nothing but silence answered him, and when he looked up he noticed the angel staring off into space, eyes blank and unfocused. "Hey!" he growled, snapping his fingers beside the blue-eyed man's ear to get his attention. "Cas, you with me buddy?"

"Oh, sorry," Cas said hurriedly, shaking his head as if to shoo away a pesky fly. "Yes, I'm with you. I'm, uh… ready for smiting."

"You okay?" Sam asked in concern, noticing how distracted Castiel seemed this morning in contrast to his usual (almost creepy) level of razor-sharp focus. It was true that the angel wasn't exactly a morning person, but barring the long period when he had been without his own grace, that was only because he chose to trick his body into thinking it needed rest in order to be able to sleep beside Dean like another human would. If he wanted to, he could instantly revert to his normal, almost robotic state of requiring no food or sleep with nothing but a thought. So now that he was back to full power, seeing him looking genuinely weary and spaced-out was more than a little worrisome.

"I'm fine, Sam. Just a little tired."

"Tired? Since when do you get tired? I thought that stopped once you got your grace back."

A mischievous grin suddenly spread across the older Winchester's lips, and Sam rolled his eyes, cutting him off before a single word could make it out of his mouth.

"Dean, do  _not_  say what I know you're thinking right now. I don't need the mental images."

"Alright, alright, Samantha," Dean said with a dramatic sigh. "I won't talk about my awesome sex life in front of you since it bothers you so much. But just a heads-up, I wouldn't use the bottle of chocolate sauce on the bottom shelf in the fridge. You probably shouldn't ask why."

Sam groaned and rolled his eyes before shooting his brother a bitch-face – either Number Sixteen or Number Twenty-seven, he couldn't quite tell which – and the older Winchester spared a moment to flip him off before turning his attention back to his lover. "Seriously though, Cas, you wanna sit this one out? We could always use some help with research and it's not worth risking you getting hurt out there if you're off your game."

"I'm alright, Dean," Castiel answered gruffly, giving the hunter a look that said he didn't dare argue that point. "Go ahead and get ready, and I'll put the leftovers away and wait for you two in the car."

"Alright then!" Dean growled, his eyes filled with a vicious excitement that only ever came into them right before a hunt. "Let's go gank this thing!"

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

"Ow! Easy, Sam!" Dean grouched as his brother pulled a long, curved suture needle through the skin of his bicep and tied the thread off tightly enough to hold together the edges of a four-inch gash running down the center of it. "You're stitching up a person, not a piece of old leather."

"Sorry," Sam answered distractedly, tying off one more careful stitch into the gash on the older hunter's arm before standing and wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. "How's that feel? Any of 'em too tight?"

Dean flexed the muscles in his arm, grimacing a little at the always-uncomfortable feeling of having pieces of nylon thread pulling on the edges of his skin, and nodded to Sam. "Nah, it's good. They'll hold until it heals."

"Good. How you holding up over there, Cas?" Sam asked, turning his attention to the other side of Dean's bed, where the angel was resting beside his hunter on top of the covers. At the sound of his name Castiel opened his eyes and gave Sam a "so-so" motion with one hand – a very human gesture he had picked up from Dean some time ago – and then closed them again and allowed his breathing to even out into a rhythm that was only slightly too quick for him to be sleeping.

The hunt had not gone as well as they had planned, to say the least.

Mindy Owens had most definitely been possessed by a demon, and a fairly powerful one at that. The hunters had tracked her down to an old warehouse on the edge of town (because apparently there was some kind of unspoken rule that monsters were only allowed to hole up in filthy abandoned shacks, instead of somewhere nice like the Marriott) and just managed to free her most recent kidnapping victim before she caught onto them.

Once she did, though, things got ugly fast.

Castiel had immediately moved forward and grabbed her, placing his palm against her head the way he always did when he was about to smite a demon that was contained in a vessel. For some reason, though, nothing happened when he touched her. Cas's eyebrows knitted together in confusion and he tried again to summon his grace to his fingertips, his body growing tense as it still failed to respond to his will.

During those few long seconds, Dean and Sam had been watching from slightly farther back, counting on the angel to do most of the dirty work since it was normally so easy for him. After seeing the way the demon failed to burn out in a flash of light like normal, though, they very quickly realized something was wrong. But before they could get over to him to offer assistance, Castiel had already taken a vicious slash across the chest with a jagged knife hidden in Mindy's jacket sleeve before she tossed him through the air with a flick of her wrist, sending him sailing head-first into one of the enormous concrete pillars that stretched all the way to the roof of the warehouse and knocking him out cold.

Enraged by the sight of his angel lying in a crumpled heap on the other side of the room, Dean lunged forward, tackling the demon to the ground and straddling her back and hips with all his weight as he pinned her arms behind her. He could feel blood running in a hot gush down his arm, trickling from his bicep where she had managed to cut him as they fell, but he ignored it in favor of focusing on keeping her held down. Sam was right behind him, and before she could throw Dean off of her he had dropped into a crouch and thrust the blade of Ruby's knife straight down through her skull, like driving a sword into a stone pedestal. The demon's body lit up with a bright yellow-orange light, which flickered like lightning and shone out of her eyes and mouth for a few seconds before burning out with one last flash.

After that they'd both turned their attention to Castiel, who was already coming back to consciousness and trying to stand on legs as wobbly as Jell-O. Dean and Sam each took one of his arms, slinging them over their shoulders and helping him to the back seat of the car where he could lie down. Dean had been so alarmed to see that the wounds on Castiel's head and chest were not healing that he insisted on remaining in the back with him, the sight of Castiel looking woozy and covered in blood too much of a reminder of how close he had been to dying only six weeks before.

By the time they made it back to the bunker, though, the cuts had knitted themselves together again, and other than a generalized sense of exhaustion, Cas was back to his usual self. He still wasn't able to call on enough of his grace to heal the gash on Dean's arm, which clearly frustrated him, but he didn't seem to be in any kind of physical distress so Dean and Sam decided he likely wasn't in any danger at that moment. Dean just told him to lie down and relax while Sam stitched him up, and Castiel willingly obliged, weary down to his bones and needing to feel Dean's presence beside him if he had any hope of staying calm enough to rest.

"Well, I think I've done about all I can for tonight," Sam said, breaking the silence in the room as he closed the first aid kit and hefted it onto one arm. "You guys need anything before I hit the hay?"

"Nah, I'm good," Dean answered with a yawn.

"Cas?"

"I'm alright. Thank you, Sam."

"Okay. Well I'll leave my door open, so if you need anything just yell."

With that he strode out of the door, leaving Dean and Cas alone in the dim, quiet room. The brunet slipped under the covers on his side of the bed, expecting Dean to do the same and lift his arm so he could slide up against his side like he usually did, but instead the hunter remained motionless on top of the bedspread, staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed tight over his chest.

Castiel sighed, turning toward him and propping himself up on one elbow. "You're angry with me." There was no emotion in his voice when he said it, but Dean knew him well enough to hear the hurt behind his words all the same.

"I'm not angry, Cas," he said gently, turning toward the angel so he could meet his eyes. "I'm frustrated. I told you this morning that you didn't have to go on this hunt if something was wrong, so why did you go ahead and come if you knew you weren't at a hundred percent?"

"I  _didn't_  know," Castiel answered earnestly, his eyes shifting downward away from Dean's in a way that could have been either embarrassment or shame. "I admit I felt slightly odd, like my 'batteries were drained,' before we left, but I didn't think it was anything of import."

"And now you think it is?" Dean sounded more concerned now than anything.

"No, I don't think so. I've only had my own grace back for a month and a half, so it's to be expected that not all of the grace I stole has been removed from my body yet. When my grace encounters the one that doesn't belong, it has to work harder than usual to isolate and destroy it before it can damage me again. I've been having occasional difficulty using my abilities ever since then, and I'm sure that's the reason why. It's nothing to worry about, but it's going to take time until I'm completely back to the way I used to be."

Dean breathed a sigh of relief, leaning forward and kissing the crown of Castiel's head before pulling him up against his side and giving him a quick peck on the lips. "That's fine, Cas. We've got time now, as much as you need. As long as you're okay, that's all that matters. But I think maybe you ought to stick to research duty for a while, at least until you stop having problems with your grace. Like I told Sam years ago, I'm no Doctor Angel Medicine Woman. If you're out on a hunt and end up with anything worse than a flesh wound, we won't be able to do anything for you, and I don't want to risk that."

"I understand," the angel answered, nuzzling his head into the hunter's shoulder as he began to feel the need for sleep creeping up on him. "I'll be happy to help you and Sam however I can. But you have to promise to be careful, too. If I can't be there to help you, you'll be in much more danger than usual. And I won't risk your safety and more than you would risk mine."

"Deal."

Now much more at ease, Dean slipped underneath the thin green bedspread beside Castiel, smiling when he realized the angel was already asleep and snoring ever so softly against his collarbone. In only minutes he was asleep as well, determinedly ignoring the niggling feeling in his gut that told him Cas might not be as alright as he claimed.


	3. July 3, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> A/N: Hi, everyone! I am so, so sorry for how long this chapter took to come out. I fully intended to have it out four days ago, but it took much longer than anticipated to find a version of it that I was happy with. I'm still not totally confident about how it turned out, so if you could please let me know what you think, I'd really appreciate it.
> 
> Also, I know you guys probably have some major questions about how all this happened, how far along Cas is, etc. So I just thought I'd tell you, next month's update is when the Winchesters and Castiel will finally find out what's going on, and where we'll get a lot of those answers.  
> So look forward to some freaked-out Dean, awesome Sam, and major Destiel fluff! (Just thought I'd share that so you have something to look forward to. The next update for this story will be published on August 6th, 2015.)
> 
> Thanks, guys. Enjoy!

**July 3, 2015**

The unpleasant feeling that something was wrong with Castiel hadn't faded by the time Dean got up the next day, and it wasn't helped by the fact that the angel ended up sleeping like a rock through most of the morning. Knowing that his grace probably still wasn't operating at full capacity and thinking a little extra sleep might do him good, Dean opted to leave him alone and let him rest, purposely ignoring the way all of his instincts demanded he do exactly the opposite. But when Cas finally did stumble out of bed at almost eleven o'clock, long after Dean and Sam had eaten breakfast and moved to the main room of the bunker for a long day of archiving old lore and answering phone calls, the hunter was not reassured to see that he still looked completely exhausted, like the extra-long night of rest had done absolutely nothing for him.

"Hey, Baby," Dean said softly, wrapping his arm around Castiel's shoulders and rubbing his palm up and down the angel's bicep. "How'd you sleep?"

"Not well," Castiel grumbled with a glare at the opposite wall, turning to give him a quick, half-hearted peck on the cheek but not leaning into the embrace like he normally would. "I can't remember what I dreamed, but it must not have been pleasant. I've felt out of sorts ever since I woke up."

 _"Well that definitely explains the Grumpy Angel Syndrome,"_  Dean thought wryly. Trying to get good sleep in the middle of an endless stream of nightmares was a near-impossible task, and one both Winchesters were intimately familiar with after so many years full of unspeakable horrors and tragedies. It was honestly a wonder Castiel hadn't suffered from nightmares long before now, given the fact that he had lived through millions more years of strife and war than the Winchesters had, but apparently his grace was usually sufficient to keep them at bay. Then again, his grace was kind of the whole problem here, wasn't it?

"That sucks," Dean sympathized, giving Cas an understanding look. "Tell you what: Sam's getting ready to go to the farmer's market and buy some rabbit food, and our pantry's almost totally empty, so in about an hour I'm gonna head out to the Wal-Mart in Concordia and pick up a little of everything else. Why don't you come with me? A little fresh air and daylight might help you get out of that funk, and we can stop for a burger at Kristy's on the way."

That finally got a small smile out of the angel. Concordia, Kansas was the only town within sixty miles of the bunker that had a Wal-Mart, and Kristy's Family Restaurant was a little diner, less than thirty seconds away from the the department store, that the two of them always stopped at when they made the trip out there. They made amazing pie, which was Dean's favorite part, and although the burgers weren't the very best he'd ever tasted they were still in the top ten. They had good salads and sandwiches, too, which meant even Sam was able to get something he liked on the rare occasions when he accompanied them.

"Yes, I think I'd like that," Castiel answered, turning and giving Dean a quick kiss. "Thank you."

"No problem," Dean said with a grin. Just like he'd always said, eating something tasty could cure any bad mood – it had always worked for Sammy when he was little, and apparently it also worked on billion-year-old angels of the Lord. "I guess it's true for you too," he said aloud.

"What is true for me?" Castiel asked, his typical  _"I do not comprehend your strange human ways"_  expression showing clearly on his face.

Dean chuckled. "Nothing, Cas. It's nothing. Never mind." And with that he turned around and headed toward the kitchen to compile a grocery list, ruffling Castiel's already messy hair as he went and laughing at the look of complete confusion plastered across his lover's face.

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

_"Perhaps ordering a bacon double cheeseburger for lunch was not a good idea,"_  Castiel thought as he accompanied Dean through the bread and pastry aisle at Wal-Mart, tossing in a loaf of whole-grain wheat bread that he knew Sam liked when it was apparent that Dean had forgotten to add it to the list. They had been at the store for nearly an hour, stocking up on everything from staples like milk, cereal, and dry pasta to things like toilet paper, razor blades, and even motor oil that Dean had realized were running low. If it had been just Dean shopping he probably would have finished already, but Castiel tended to stop and ask questions every time he encountered an unfamiliar item on the shelves, and Dean would take the time to patiently explain the food or object's purpose to him before starting forward again, so they ended up taking twice as long as necessary.

The hunter was a few steps ahead of him now, adding some sugary snacks and cakes to the basket; even though he cooked most of his own meals these days and ate healthier in general, there were some still some lifelong junk habits he hadn't yet managed to kick. When Dean opened one of the boxes and grabbed a chocolate snack cake from inside, offering the first bite to him – it wasn't a problem, Dean had once told him, as long as they paid for the whole box at the front – Castiel realized that the idea of eating anything suddenly sounded completely repulsive, and turned it down with an involuntary swallow and a small shake of his head. Dean shrugged and let it be, continuing on his snack-buying mission with the same single-minded determination he usually reserved for dangerous hunts and half of a Ho-Ho hanging out the side of his mouth.

Castiel had been feeling off ever since he woke up that morning. Despite how exhausted he had been after the hunt the night before, his sleep had been restless and plagued with nightmares, and he had awoken feeling sweaty, hot, and as tired as he was before he went to bed. For some reason the sound of Dean's voice, which usually filled him with warmth and comfort, had only sounded grating and irritating when he greeted him this morning, making him want to pull away from his lover's embrace rather than return it.

Strangest of all was the dull ache in his belly, which had started out as a bizarre throbbing feeling behind his navel and had spread through most of his abdomen by the time they reached Concordia. He had thought that it might be one of the "hunger pangs" Dean often complained of when he wanted something to eat, and so he had ordered more food than usual at Kristy's, eating through a double bacon cheeseburger, a side order of fries, a strawberry milkshake, and a piece of cherry pie with nearly as much gusto as the hunter who sat beside him. He had no idea why he would suddenly be experiencing hunger, given that angels did not require food, but seeing as his grace was still readapting to being back in his body, he accepted the newfound feeling without much thought.

Now, though, he was beginning to doubt that hunger had been the problem at all. In fact, eating seemed to have made everything worse. His stomach had been doing strange things ever since lunch, growling and groaning as if it was angry with him for what he had put into it, and when he pressed his palm against his belly in an attempt to discern the source of the problem he suddenly felt something trying to work its way up his throat, the unpleasant burn making him cough and swallow hard in an instinctive desire to keep it down.

With a growing sense of dread, he realized he was experiencing nausea, recalling the awful sensation that usually preceded vomiting from the first - and only - time he had experienced it, during his time as a human. Starving and without any money, he had eaten some discarded food out of a dumpster behind a Mexican restaurant after closing, not realizing that any kind of meat found in a trash receptacle was probably unfit for human consumption and becoming miserably ill as a result. He had been completely terrified when it first happened, unprepared for exactly how uncomfortable it would be when his body rejected the contaminated food and worried he was going to suffocate once the violent heaves began and stole his breath away. It was made even worse by the fact that he was completely alone at the time, with no one to tell him what was happening to his body or that it was a totally normal and even helpful process, not something that was going to kill him.

But why was he feeling like this at all? Dean and Sam had been eating exactly the same foods as he had, and they seemed perfectly fine. Besides, angels were supposed to be impervious to viral and bacterial infections; he had thought that the return of his grace meant he would never have to experience that awful feeling again. Just the memory of it was enough to make his stomach clench now, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, starting to feel the first hints of panic as he stifled a quiet burp and fought against the urge to gag.

"Cas?"

Castiel nearly jumped when he heard Dean's voice beside him; he hadn't even noticed him approach. The hunter looked at him with concern, the corners of his mouth turning down when he saw the pallor of Cas's face and the way he was breathing shallowly and swallowing every few seconds.

"Hey, you okay?" Dean asked, reaching up and giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "You don't look so good."

"I'm fine," Castiel gritted out, desperately trying to ignore the way his insides lurched again as if to make a liar out of him. "But being inside this store is starting to feel stifling. Would you mind finishing up the shopping while I wait by the Impala? I think I'd like to go outside and stand in the sun."

"Oh, uh, sure," Dean answered slowly, clearly still suspicious but not sure how to call him out on it.

Castiel couldn't find it in him to care, though, because the two of them had just passed by the deli counter near the front entrance, and it took only a second to realize that that was a mistake. The instant the scents of chilled spiced meats, pungent cheeses and butter- and garlic-smothered rotisserie chickens reached his nose, the sick feeling in his gut seemed to increase tenfold, making his mouth water and the muscles in his abdomen begin to press in on themselves.

Turning around and giving Dean what he hoped was a reassuring smile rather than a pained grimace, he turned on his heel and walked out of the store, dashing toward the Impala and away from all the offensive odors as soon as he was clear of the front doors. Once he got there he leaned against the passenger door and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and slowly in an attempt to quell the nausea.

 _"I am an angel of the Lord,"_ he told himself. _"I have more power over my physical being than any human. I'll be fine, I just have to control this sensation until it abates. Dean will to be here soon with the groceries and then we can go back to the bunker. I can control –"_

"Hey, Cas!"

Castiel opened his eyes at the sound of Dean's voice, watching as he approached with a cart stuffed full of bulging plastic grocery bags and gaining some momentary relief from his discomfort when the hunter smiled and kissed him, sending a familiar jolt of pleasant electricity from his head to his toes. But a moment later he smelled something unpleasantly familiar, looking down at the cart and doing his best not to recoil in horror when he saw a large rotisserie chicken, shining with a glaze of butter and herbs, sitting in a plastic package on top of the other items.

"Dean," he moaned in dismay, swallowing spasmodically as he looked anywhere but at the roasted bird. "You bought one of the… chickens?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah," Dean said happily, picking up the package and removing its plastic top before taking a deep sniff and bringing it over to the angel. "Here, smell this – friggin' amazing, right? Who woulda thought Wal-Mart could bake a better chicken than me? I figured I'd use it for dinner tonight, maybe cook up some baked potatoes and green beans to go with it, and – Cas? Hey, are you okay?" he asked, noticing how sweaty the blue-eyed man looked and the way his face had suddenly gone completely white.

"No," Castiel choked out, one hand coming up to clutch at his belly as he screwed his eyes shut.

And that was all the warning Dean got before the angel doubled over and vomited on his boots.

_***DeanCastiel*** _

The next couple of hours were pretty much a blur for Dean. He had stood patiently beside Castiel for several minutes while he lost his lunch just inches from the front bumper of some poor bastard's Chevy Malibu, rubbing his shuddering back and whispering soft reassurances in his ear when the dry heaves began and threatened to push him into a complete panic. Seeing his angel so terrified by something he had dealt with hundreds of times in his life was nearly impossible to bear, and it killed him that there was absolutely nothing he could do except stand beside him and wait until it all stopped on its own.

Even worse was the fact that he knew angels should never be able to get sick like this in the first place. For Cas to be in this condition now meant that his earlier suspicions had been correct, and the angel really wasn't as okay as he had claimed to be. He hurriedly pushed that thought to the back of his mind, though; there would be plenty of time to worry about malfunctioning grace once they got home, but right now he needed to focus on keeping Castiel calm and making sure he knew this was nothing to worry about. One thing was for sure, though: he was getting really freaking tired of seeing the one he loved sick and worn-down, and if he found out that some supernatural creature was still coming after Cas after all the crap he had already been through, he was going to have a lot of fun making them suffer before he ended them.

Once Cas had finally settled down and seemed to be finished turning himself inside out, Dean grabbed a Kleenex from the box he had just purchased (thank God for Sam's seasonal allergies) and handed it to him, instructing him to wipe his nose and mouth while he fetched a bottle of water for him to rinse his mouth out. Castiel obeyed, still clammy and breathless and looking as miserable as a wet kitten, and only moments later Dean opened the Impala's passenger door and guided him into the seat, turning the A/C on full blast to cool the car down and laying out two plastic sacks beside him.

"I'm so sorry, Dean," Castiel said softly, his cheeks flushed beet red with embarrassment. "I thought I could control it. I didn't know I was going to –"

"Cas, no," Dean cut him off, leaning in and kissing his cheek before taking the dirty tissue from him and tossing it onto the ground. "Trust me, it's okay. Sam and I have both been there plenty of times; it's not worth getting upset over. Besides, these boots have stepped in a whole lot of nastier stuff than angel puke."

Castiel groaned and swallowed hard, pressing the back of his hand against his lips. "Please don't say 'puke,' Dean."

Dean grimaced sympathetically. "Right, sorry. Alright, you just sit tight for a couple of minutes while I put the groceries in the trunk, and then we'll get on the road."

"What if it happens again before we get back to the bunker?"

"That's what those bags are for. If you feel like you're gonna get sick again just do it in there, okay?"

"Alright."

He didn't look like he really thought it was alright at all – in fact, if Dean didn't know better, he'd swear the poor guy looked seconds away from crying – but there was really no choice. Until they got home, there was really nothing to do but ride it out.

So that's exactly what they did. The car ride back to the bunker was spent mostly in silence, with the usually ear-splitting music turned off so that Dean would be able to pick up on any kind of distress from his lover more easily. Castiel spent the entirety of the drive either slumped back in his seat with his eyes closed or hunched forward with the plastic sack in his hands, occasionally curling forward to burp and spit over it but never actually getting sick again. By the time they reached the bunker he seemed to be feeling significantly better, still pale and shaky but now only giving the occasional nauseated hiccup instead of looking like he was an instant away from tossing his cookies.

As soon as the Impala was pulled far enough into the garage, Dean shut the engine off and made his way around to the passenger side door, opening it up and gently helping Castiel to his feet. He gave him a few moments to steady himself, making sure the transition from sitting to standing was going to sit alright with him, and then wrapped his arm around his shoulders and steered him toward the door. The sooner Cas was tucked into bed and resting, the better Dean would feel.

When they passed through the living room they ran into Sam, who had gotten back from his produce shopping trip an hour ago and was now stretched out on the couch, reading a thick novel and snacking on a bowl of apple slices. When the younger man caught sight of them his face fell, and he was on his feet and making his way over to them in a second.

"Cas? What's wrong? Did something happen?" he asked anxiously, noting how weary, pale, and just plan  _sick_  the angel looked.

"I'm alr –"

"No, you're not alright," Dean cut him off, his expression revealing a lot more about how worried he was than his voice did. "He lost his lunch right as we were leaving Wal-Mart – got my boots, too, so leave 'em in the garage where I put them. I'll need to hose 'em off," he added when caught Sam looking at his feet, which were covered only by socks. "Anyway, would you mind carrying the groceries in? I'm gonna get him taken care of and see if I can find out what's wrong."

"Yeah, sure," Sam said quickly, already turning around to make his way out to the car. "If you need anything just yell, Cas."

Castiel shot a quick glare at Dean, obviously not happy about being talked over when he was perfectly capable of answering for himself, and then let it go with a resigned sigh. "I will. Thank you, Sam."

With that Dean ushered him down the hall and into their bedroom, getting him propped up against a couple of pillows and pulling his shoes and socks off with practiced ease. He knew Cas would probably be more comfortable in pajamas rather than jeans and a T-shirt, but at that moment his priority was just getting him settled into bed and finding out what the hell was going on with him.

"Okay, Cas," he said gruffly once Castiel had stretched out against the pillows, palms resting over his stomach and eyes already starting to blink sleepily. "What the hell happened back there? And don't just say you're fine again – I've spent way too much time around you to believe that an angel barfing all over the parking lot is normal."

"I'm not sure, Dean," Castiel answered softly, his face finally showing a little bit of worry to match the near-panic Dean was feeling inside. "I thought that my exhaustion yesterday was a side-effect of my own grace reestablishing control over my body, but now I'm beginning to doubt that. I've never been sick like this before, except for when I was human, so I have no idea what might be causing it now."

"Have you ever seen any of the other angels deal with something like this?"

"Not that I can recall, no."

Dean sighed, running his hand over his lips and chin in an unconscious sign of nervousness. Then his eyes widened, fists clenching around two handfuls of the bedspread as a horrible thought suddenly occurred to him. "Fuck… What if that demon bitch did something to you last night? Like a curse or something?"

Castiel canted his head to one side, thinking it over. "I suppose that's possible, but when would she have had the chance to curse me? I was with both of you the entire time, and there were no wards there that could harm me in any way."

"What about when she cut you, though? I know she got me too, but that knife could've had some spell or toxin on it that only affects angels."

"Maybe," Castiel conceded with a solemn nod. "But since we killed her, the odds of finding out what she used are slim to none. I'll likely just need to wait until whatever this is runs its course, and hope the process isn't too unpleasant."

"The hell with that," Dean spat, wishing he could bring that bitch back to life just so he could kill her again. "We live in a gigantic library full of supernatural lore, and Sam's the biggest research nerd on the planet. If anyone's equipped to find out what's going on with you, it's one of us."

He stood up from the bed, leaning over and giving the angel a soft, tender kiss. "I'm gonna go help Sam carry in the groceries, and then I'll get him caught up on everything you told me. Do you feel okay enough for me to help him research, or should I stay in here?"

"I'm fine, Dean. I already feel much better than I did before. Whatever this is seems to be fading on its own."

Dean nodded, happy to hear that there was at least some improvement but not willing to trust that it would last. "That's good, Cas, but we still need to make sure we know what this is. If this is just the eye of the storm, we need to know what's coming next. I'll be back to check on you in a little while, okay? If you need anything before then, just call and I'll be here."

"Alright. Thank you, Dean."

"Any time."

With that the hunter spun on his heel and made his way toward the bunker's main room, ready to enlist his brother's help in puzzling out what might be plaguing their friend. Nothing hurt Dean's family unless it had a death wish, and he refused to lose Castiel now, so soon after he'd gotten his family back to the way it was supposed to be. No matter what, he was going to track down whatever this thing was and obliterate it – even if he had to die trying.


	4. July 9, 2015 (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> A/N: Okay, so I'm pretty sure that out of all the multi-chapter fics and one-shots I've written over the years, this chapter right here was probably the hardest piece of writing I have ever done in my life. I thought I would never be able to get it to turn out how I wanted, especially not by the deadline! But finally, after almost a month of frustration, here we are.
> 
> The action is really going to start picking up after this chapter, and because this one would have been unbearably long if I had crammed in everything I wanted it to have, it ends on a bit of a cliffy (sorry-not-sorry). But because of this, I will be posting one additional chapter this month so that I can get the story on track with where I wanted it to be by today. You're welcome. ;)
> 
> So, with all that said, enjoy!
> 
> ***
> 
> All art for this chapter was created by me, using The Sims 3.

**_July 9, 2015_ **

Even though he had never really entertained the possibility that Castiel's mystery illness was just food poisoning or some angelic version of a twenty-four-hour bug, Dean had still desperately hoped that whatever was afflicting him might work itself out of his system on its own with a few days of rest and TLC. After all, Cas had dealt with some pretty severe wounds and spells before and usually recovered completely in only a matter of hours. But when six days had passed and he was still suffering from the same level of exhaustion as before, along with daily bouts of sporadic nausea and dizziness, it became apparent that something worse than a bad milkshake was at work.

"Damn it all!" Dean growled, slamming the leather-bound tome in his hands onto the table so hard that it kicked up a small cloud of dust. "This one's useless, too! You'd think for all the Men of Letters claimed to know about anything and everything supernatural, they'd have at least one friggin' book that could tell us how to cure a sick angel!"

Sam sighed, gently closing the cover of his own book and nodding in silent agreement. The two of them had been up researching since five o'clock that morning, and it was now nearly eleven a.m.; almost a week had passed since Castiel's mysterious illness had begun, and despite spending all of their time searching through every piece of literature the Men of Letters had on angels, so far the Winchesters had come up with nothing useful.

For the first day or so, Dean had been convinced that Cas had been poisoned during his ill-fated encounter with the demon. At the time, even Sam agreed that it seemed totally possible, especially since the symptoms seemed to have manifested almost immediately after he had been cut by her blade. But after researching the very few herbal mixtures and potions that could be used to kill, paralyze, or otherwise incapacitate an angel, Dean had come to the conclusion that Castiel was not suffering from any kind of poisoning. Every single toxin that could harm angels would also harm humans, and since Dean had been slashed with the demon's knife too and yet suffered no ill effects, that explanation simply didn't hold water.

Within another day or two it also became clear that Castiel's guess, which was that his symptoms were a result of some of his own grace being rejected as it readapted to his body, was also unfortunately incorrect. Other than the fact that the angel was now constantly fatigued and remained sleepy and lethargic even when he wasn't in bed, none of his symptoms mimicked those that had accompanied the rejection of grace before. He had no fever, no swollen lymph nodes or bloodshot eyes, and not even the slightest trace of a cough, let alone coughing up blood.

While this was definitely something to be glad about, it also meant that the only likely explanation for Castiel's ailment was some kind of curse, and that was a horribly complicated kind of magic that neither Sam nor Dean was particularly gifted in. If they had known exactly which curse had been used, it would have been easy as pie to look up the counter-curse in the Men of Letters' library and get Cas cured. The problem was, they  _didn't_  know which one had been used, and had no easy way of finding out since they had killed the demon who had cast it. Several types of curses could cause symptoms like nausea, vomiting, and fatigue, which made narrowing it down almost impossible, and if they chose the wrong one and used an unnecessary counter-curse, it could actually end up hurting Castiel much more than it helped him.

"We can't keep letting this go on," Dean said softly when Sam didn't respond aloud. "I know Cas says he feels okay except for when he's puking, but he told me he was fine when that stolen grace was practically burning his insides out too, so I'm not about to take his word for it." He blew out a harsh breath between his lips, his hands clenching into fists on top of the table. "After all we went through to save him before, he might be dying right in front of us all over again. What the hell are we supposed to do?"

He sighed and pulled his hand down his face, and in a voice so small it could barely be heard said, "I can't lose him again, Sam. Not after all this time."

Sam frowned, looking upwards and running his fingers back through his long hair in a subconscious sign of uncertainty before he gave his brother a sympathetic look. "I don't know yet, Dean. But we'll figure something out, okay? I promise."

Dean had already opened his mouth to answer that when the loud bang of the bedroom door slamming open stopped him short. A moment later he heard the rapid, dull slapping of bare feet sprinting down the hall and the bathroom door opening, followed almost immediately by the sound of harsh, breathless retching.

"Shit…" he muttered, out of his seat and already halfway across the living room without a second thought. "Sam, can you –"

"Go," Sam said hurriedly, waving him toward the hallway. "He needs you. I can handle this for a little while."

Dean gave him a grateful half-smile and jogged off in the direction of the bathroom, and in moments Sam could hear his voice drifting down the hall, the words indistinct but his tone soft and gentle as he did his best to soothe the near-panic Cas seemed to fall into every time his body rebelled against him like this.

That alone was reason enough to get whatever this was fixed quickly. Castiel and Sam hadn't always been on the best terms, but after years of being forced into each other's company they'd actually bonded really closely. If it was this heartbreaking for  _him_  to watch Cas go through whatever was happening to him, he couldn't even imagine what it must be doing to Dean.

He was about to get up and put away the book on the table in front of him, inwardly cursing the fact that it had been just as uninformative as all the others, when his phone began to vibrate violently on the tabletop, startling him slightly as the loud buzzing broke through the relative silence in the room. Without a second thought he snatched it up and hit the "Accept Call" button, accustomed to having fellow hunters call him at any time of day to ask for assistance in their research.

"This is Sam," he answered automatically, expecting to hear the voice of a hunter named Greg who had been asking about tips for tracking a rougarou up in Michigan for the last couple of days. "Look, man, this is kind of a bad time. Can you call me back a little later or –"

"Who are you calling 'man,' Sam? It's me!"

The sound of that cheerful female voice stopped Sam cold, all thoughts of telling whoever it was to call back later instantly evaporating as a bright smile stretched across his lips.

"Charlie?"

"Who else do you know that has your number and sounds just like me? You guys haven't been cheating on me with some other computer geek while I've been gone, have you?"

"Of course not! Only the Queen of Moondor is worthy of hanging with the Winchesters," Sam joked lamely, nearly rolling his eyes when he realized how much he sounded like Dean. "I just didn't expect to hear from you. When did you get back from Oz?"

"It's been a few weeks now. For some reason the portal I ended up coming back through was somewhere in Ontario, and it took a while to work my way back down to the States. But I'm actually not far from Lebanon now, and I wanted to see if you guys were free so I could tell you all about it. If it's a bad time, though –"

"No, no," Sam cut her off, worried she might hang up and realizing just how fortunate it was that she had chosen today to call them. "It's actually a really good time. We've uh, got a bit of a situation here with Castiel. He got sick last week and hasn't gotten any better, and Dean and I still haven't been able to figure out what's wrong. But since you're in the area, do you think you might be able to come help us? You know, see what we might have overlooked? You're probably the best researcher I've ever met, so if anyone can help us figure this out it's you."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, Sam," Charlie answered, and he could hear her chuckle faintly above the soft rumble of her car's engine. When she spoke again, though, her tone was completely serious. "I'll be there in two hours. Tell me what you know so far."

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

Ever since the Leviathans had pulled her into the insanely twisted and dangerous world of the supernatural, Charlie Bradbury had spent almost all of her free time learning everything she could about the monsters and spirits that made their homes all over the world. Most of the things she read about would seem like harmless stories to the uninitiated, just a bunch of urban legends kids told to scare each other – and for most of her life, the ginger-haired computer hacker had believed that same thing.

But the truth, which she sometimes still couldn't completely wrap her head around, was that every single one of those stories was one-hundred percent true. Vampires, werewolves, angels, demons – every last one of them was completely real. And in a weirder twist of fate than she had ever read in any Sci-Fi novel, she had somehow wound up with Sam and Dean Winchester, two of the most famous monster hunters in the world, as her surrogate brothers. She hadn't expected to bond with them nearly as closely as she had, especially since in the beginning she had only been a tool for helping Dean track down Dick Roman. But the Winchesters had quickly adopted her as one of their own, and before long she felt just as much at home inside their little broken family as she would have if she'd been born into it.

So when she finally reached the Men of Letters bunker, tucked so deeply into the base of a heavily-wooded hill that it was visible only to those who knew to look for it, she couldn't help but feel a pleasant warmth spreading through her chest. As she made her way past the glistening black 1967 Impala in the driveway and up to the front steps, a small smile began stretching across her face; by the time she reached up to knock on the door, it was wide enough to show most of her teeth. She knew this wasn't just a pleasure trip; curses could be nasty things, and considering the fact that she had never actually met Castiel before and so had no idea what was or wasn't normal for him, it was going to be even more difficult to suss out the right counter-spell. But even knowing all of that, the moment she rapped her knuckles against the door and heard footsteps approaching on the other side was the first time in over a year that Charlie had truly felt like she was  _home_.

It took only a couple of seconds for the door to swing open, and before she knew what was happening Sam had wrapped her up in a tight hug, his monstrous strength making it a little hard to breathe. Inwardly, she thanked whatever higher powers might be listening that he viewed her as part of the family, because she would sure hate to make an enemy of someone who could most likely snap her like a twig if he wanted to.

"Hey, Charlie. How are you?" the hunter asked warmly as soon as released her.

"Pretty good," she said with a teasing smirk, "except I think my spine might've just cracked a little."

Sam just chuckled and ushered her inside, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze while he shut the door behind her. "I'm really glad you're here," he said soberly, his gaze flicking quickly toward the downstairs foyer as if making sure his brother wasn't in earshot. "Like I told you on the phone, we've been researching for days and haven't found out anything except what  _isn't_  causing this. And I'm pretty sure all the hovering is starting to get on Cas's nerves. I swear he looked about two seconds away from strangling Dean the last time he asked if he felt okay."

Charlie gave a dramatic sigh. "What am I gonna do with you boys? I take a little vacation and you all completely fall apart." She turned on her heel and started making her way down the spiral staircase to the main floor, already familiar with the layout of the bunker and eager to get started on the research. "Don't worry. I'll figure this out, I promise. Just try to keep the lovebirds from getting too fed up with each other while I do."

She never did hear what Sam said in return, because at that moment her eyes landed on Dean and another darker-haired man sitting side by side at the table on the lower level, deep in conversation and completely oblivious to what was going on above them. After a moment the second man turned his head slightly so he could gesture something with his hands, and when Charlie caught sight of his incredibly bright blue eyes and the dark five o'clock shadow covering his jaw she nearly jumped up and down with excitement, instantly recognizing that he must be Castiel. Just before she reached the bottom Dean leaned over and kissed the angel, and her inner fangirl squealed in delight. She had already known Dean and Cas were a couple for quite a while – Dean himself had told her about them a long time ago – but seeing it in action made it completely obvious why so many people enjoyed writing fanfiction about the two of them.

Despite the fact that he was an incredibly old and amazingly powerful servant of Heaven – and admittedly very handsome, even if he wasn't her type – Castiel looked downright adorable when he smiled against Dean's lips, practically melting into the hunter's chest as he wrapped his arms around him. And except for the slightest traces of dark bags beneath his eyes, he actually looked really healthy, which was weird considering he was supposed to be afflicted with some kind of deadly curse. She guessed things like illness might not be as easy to see in an angel as they were in humans, but still, something about it didn't seem to add up, and she made a mental note to look into that later. Dean, despite the worried lines creasing his lips as as he locked eyes with his lover, still looked more content than Charlie had ever seen him, and the sight gave her the same kind of warm fuzzies she always got whenever she saw a cute kitten video online.

_Destiel for the win._

"Huh?" Dean grunted, pulling away from Cas so he could look over his shoulder toward the staircase.

Woops. Apparently she'd said that out loud.

"Oh! Uh, Charlie. When did you get here?" he asked, blushing slightly when it became clear he had just been too busy flirting with Castiel to notice Sam opening the door. She didn't even have a chance to answer before he was out of his chair and striding over to her, pulling her into a hug only slightly less painful than Sam's before he laughed and clapped her on the back. "Ah, hell, it doesn't even matter. I'm just glad you're here. We need all the help we can get."

He turned toward Castiel, who had risen from his chair and come to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, and gestured between them as he did the introductions.

"Charlie, this is Cas. Cas, Charlie."

"Holy crap," Charlie breathed, unable to come up with anything more eloquent for several seconds. "I, uh… The books always made you sound shorter," she stammered, blushing slightly when she realized how dumb that sounded and relieved when it actually got a small laugh out of the stone-faced angel.

"It's nice to meet you too, Charlie," he said warmly, a soft, almost shy smile pulling up the corners of his lips as he extended his hand for her to shake. A moment later he tensed in surprise as she practically pounced on him, giving him a quick hug before stepping back and laughing at the deer-in-headlights look on his face.

"You didn't think you could escape a Charlie Bradbury hug, did you?" she asked teasingly, smiling when she caught sight of his signature confused head-tilt. "After all, you're practically the third Winchester now, and it's the law in Moondor that all Winchesters shall be subjected to hugs from the Queen any time she likes."

She expected that to get another chuckle out of Castiel, or at least an amused smirk, since he seemed to be much happier than the stoic, serious, almost gloomy servant of God Chuck's books had always portrayed him to be.

What she  _didn't_  expect was the way he suddenly tensed from head to toe like she had hit him, his eyes growing shiny as they welled up with tears and his bottom lip beginning to tremble. It caught her completely off guard, and evidently the Winchesters too, because no one said anything for several moments, not sure exactly what was happening or how to react. Then Cas brought a hand up to cover his eyes, ducking his head and sniffling softly, and that was all it took for Dean to snap out of his shock. In an instant he had reached out and wrapped an arm around the angel's shoulders, pulling him close to his side and rubbing his chest in a way that was obviously meant to be comforting.

"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" he asked softly. "You're kinda scarin' me a little here, Cas."

"I'm sorry," Castiel croaked, attempting to smile at Charlie and only succeeding in breaking her heart a little when she saw the shining tear-tracks running down his cheeks. "I-I'm very happy to meet you, Charlie, and… I'm honored that you consider me a part of your family. I know it doesn't look that way just now, but I assure you I am…"

By the time he finished speaking he was having to work hard to keep from openly sobbing, and it only got harder once he realized that fact and began to panic slightly. "Dean, what is happening to me? Why can't I stop?"

"Easy, take it easy," Dean soothed, already starting to guide Cas back toward their bedroom and shooting Charlie a half-apologetic, half-confused look over his shoulder. "It'll stop, okay? It will. Come on, let's go watch that  _'Too Cute!'_  show you like. I don't even like cats and it still cheers me up…"

For almost a minute after Dean and Castiel disappeared around the corner, neither Charlie nor Sam said a single word. After a minute, though, Charlie swallowed hard and managed to ask, "So… I take it that's not his normal reaction to meeting new people?"

"No," Sam answered slowly, looking just as shell-shocked as she felt. "No, that's, uh, that's definitely new."

"Okay…" Charlie muttered. "Well, I guess we can add crazy mood swings to the list of sympt– Hold on a minute…" She gasped as it suddenly hit her: exhaustion, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, irritability, and now unexpected bouts of crying? It was crazy, totally crazy, and she knew she should probably be committed for even thinking it, but what if all those things weren't indicative of a curse at all? What if…

Without another word she strode over to the library table, looking through the stack of thick tomes until she found one that looked like it might provide some insight on the inner workings of angels and their vessels. The book was mostly hand-written, and appeared to be the journal of a 17th-century Man of Letters who had devoted his life to studying angels, specifically a small colony of earthbound seraphim who had lived together in a hidden settlement off the coast of Scotland. A lot of his handwriting was illegible, written either in Enochian or some kind of hieroglyphic-like symbols that she would love to try to decode at a later date. But whoever this person was had evidently wanted any future Men of Letters to be able to access the most important of his findings easily, because the parts which described everything the angels did in their daily lives in great detail were fairly easy to make out.

In only minutes she had found what she sought, two sloppily-written paragraphs that would have gone completely unnoticed amongst all the sketches and runes by anyone who wasn't specifically looking for them:

_"It should not be possible, and yet I am unable to deny the veracity of the miracles I have been privileged to witness since being accepted into the company of the Fallen. Of these seven angels who chose to forsake the will of Heaven so that they might dwell among humanity, all, including the two male seraphim who each chose as their mate a human of identical sex, have conceived and birthed children of their own within the last two years._

_"The younger of the males, Zeruel, may possibly be expecting a second fledgling as well, for he is beginning to exhibit the same fatigue and aversion to many foods that plagued him in the early months of his first gestation. More observation is needed, but if fortune smiles upon us, there may be another young angel born into this clan before year's end." – Nathaniel Sherbourne, 1657_

For a long time Charlie could do nothing but stare at the text in front of her, until the rows of looping letters began to blur into one enormous Rorschach test of crazy. She couldn't believe it. Not only was her theory possible, it was actually  _probable!_  Without even knowing it, the Winchesters and Castiel had gotten themselves into yet another situation that should only have been able to exist inside the wonderfully strange world of science fiction. And she had just been the one to figure it out.

_Ho. Ly. Crap._

"Charlie? What is it?"

"I think I figured it out, Sam," she said with a calm that surprised her, sliding a small piece of paper between the book's weathered pages before allowing it to fall shut. "I know what's wrong with Castiel."


	5. July 9, 2015 (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. I do not own any of the characters, except OCs, in this story.
> 
> A/N: Alright, here's the promised second chapter of this month, guys! The next update will be September 3rd, so I hope you'll look forward to it.
> 
> P.S. Happy Birthday, Maknatuna! I hope this is a suitable present! :)
> 
> ***
> 
> The art for this chapter was created by me, using The Sims 3.

"So let me get this straight. You think Cas is  _pregnant?_ That's not… He can't even… You can't be serious, Charlie!"

"I'm as serious as a heart-attack, Sam," Charlie answered with a calm she didn't feel, reopening the old journal and tracing the tips of her fingers over the curvy scrawl of Nathaniel Sherbourne's last entry. "He's been nauseous, tired, dizzy, and moody ever since last week, right?"

"Well yeah, but that could be caused by a lot of –"

"Those symptoms line up perfectly with the ones a pregnant woman has to deal with in her first trimester," Charlie cut him off. "Trust me, I saw enough of them while I was visiting my mom in the hospital to know that from experience. And besides, there's already documentation right here of three other male angel pregnancies, with two from the same guy! I bet if we spend a little time looking we can find even more, too."

"But how can that even be physically possible?" Sam nearly shouted, sounding like he was only seconds away from completely freaking out. "I mean, I know Cas is an angel, but he's in a male body! I may not have a medical degree, but I do know enough about men's anatomy to know we are  _not_  equipped for having babies!"

Charlie sighed, slightly offended by the way Sam was acting like she'd completely lost her mind but not willing to call him on it, since she'd been thinking the same thing until only minutes ago.

"I don't know, Sam. My guess is it has something to do with his grace, since that's the thing that gives him the ability to perform miracles and fly across the world in a fraction of a second. Plus, according to Chuck's books Castiel rebuilt Dean's body cell by cell so his soul could be put back inside after Hell, right? If his grace was powerful enough to completely recreate a human body from nothing and then breathe life back into it, it probably wouldn't be too much of a challenge for it to give his vessel the right organs for pregnancy."

"Okay, yeah, maybe," Sam conceded, his voice airy and breathless as the shock of realizing this kind of made sense began to sink in. "But if that's true then why hasn't Cas told us about it? Why keep pretending he has no idea why he's sick?"

"I don't think he's pretending," Charlie said thoughtfully, remembering the last few sentences of the journal entry. "At least in this entry, it seems like the Man of Letters documenting these angels' lives actually realized they were pregnant before they did. I'll need to do a little more research, but it sounds like it probably happened by accident, just like it can in women. I bet Castiel didn't think to tell you guys because he just isn't aware that it's possible."

Sam chuckled darkly. "That actually wouldn't surprise me. Based on what he's told us about Heaven, the higher-ups only pass down information on a need-to-know basis. They probably never counted on Cas ending up with a human, or even another angel, so even if one of the archangels knew it was possible they wouldn't have told him."

He took a deep breath and ran his hand down his face, unknowingly mirroring the way his brother always tended to display stress. "Okay, so just… Assuming that all of this is true, and by some miracle of God Cas really is pregnant… How in the hell are we supposed to break it to the two of them? Dean tends to blow off anything that sounds like it might happen in one of those Destiel fanfictions people write – for some reason they freak him out almost as much as the ones about him and me, even though he and Cas actually  _are_  together. My guess is that even if Cas believes us, Dean is just going to think we're on some really good drugs and ask us why we didn't share."

Charlie was silent for several minutes, staring down at the journal and tapping her fingers on the table as she tried to think of the best answer for that problem. To be honest, she at a complete loss herself. This was way outside her comfort zone, and despite the fact that she had read several of the aforementioned Destiel fanfictions, nothing could have prepared her for actually having to be the one break the news to the real Dean and Castiel that they were expecting. Somehow she doubted it was going to be as easy or pleasant as those stories always made it sound.

But as freaked-out and confused as she was by all of this, she knew Sam had to be even more so. For one thing, the younger hunter was a man, so he didn't have any frame of reference for the things she was telling him. Nausea, irritability, and fatigue were annoyingly frequent parts of the female experience, so even though she had never been pregnant herself, Charlie had regularly experienced a milder form of most of Cas's symptoms and could at least sympathize with him. Even Dean, as totally averse to "chick stuff" as he was, had learned a little bit about the gestation process thanks to watching Mary while she was pregnant with Sam, even if he likely didn't remember much about it.

Sam, though, had never had any experience with pregnant women at all, so for him this was completely unfamiliar territory. That unfortunately meant that he was going to be almost no help in figuring out what to do here. No matter how awkward it might be, revealing the truth to Dean and Castiel was going to have to fall to Charlie – and she really wasn't sure if she was up to the task.

After thinking on it for what seemed like an eternity, though, an idea came to her, so sudden and so perfect that she could almost see the lightbulb turning on above her head. When she finally looked up at Sam, she was positively beaming.

"Alright, Sam," she said confidently, standing up and retrieving her bag from its place beside the chair. "Here's what we're gonna do…"

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

The early hours of that evening were tense for everyone in the bunker. Dean and Castiel had finally emerged from their bedroom sometime after three o'clock, almost two hours after Cas's sudden fit of crying. Dean was currently occupied with cooking dinner for everyone, frying up homemade ground-beef patties in a large skillet and effortlessly slicing up lettuce, tomatoes, and onions while he waited for each side to darken. Sam was in the shower, which was necessary for his part in tonight's plan to reveal Castiel's pregnancy to everyone, and Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to distract herself from her own nervousness by chatting up the angel in question.

This would have been easier if Castiel was willing to talk back, but evidently he was still too embarrassed about losing control of his emotions to want to engage in conversation with anyone. Every time Charlie asked him anything he answered in as few words as possible, keeping his gaze trained on Dean's back or his own lap so he wouldn't have to meet her eyes. It broke her heart a little, because she knew he had always been used to having perfect control over everything he did and must be terrified by the way his body was betraying him now. What made her feel even worse, though, was that she was going to have to purposely trigger a few of his symptoms in order for the plan she and Sam had concocted to work, and it definitely wouldn't be fun for him.

After a lot of discussion, she had managed to figure out that Castiel's morning sickness – or night sickness, since his stomach tended to get upset in the early hours of the morning more often than it did after sunrise – was not always spontaneous. There were some things that, when Sam had given it some thought, he told Charlie had caused Cas to vomit even when he hadn't seemed to be feeling nauseous to start with. Some were pretty typical morning sickness triggers because of their pungent smells, with bacon and coffee being the worst offenders. But the least obvious one, which they were going to utilize tonight, was the scent of Sam's Old Spice aftershave.

Charlie cautiously placed her hand over the pocket of her jeans, checking for about the hundredth time to make sure the three pregnancy tests she had purchased that afternoon were still inside. She had finally given up on engaging Castiel in conversation, focusing instead on trying to act normal as she pretended to look over all of Sam and Dean's research notes from the past week. That was probably for the better, though, because the more she thought about the fact that she was going to be actively trying to make him sick, the guiltier she felt. It was necessary if she wanted to get him away from Dean long enough to get some definitive answers, especially since the hunter rarely detached himself from his angel's side ever since his symptoms began, but it still didn't make her any happier about having to do this to her new friend.

By the time Dean got started on the final batch of burgers, kneading the ground beef into thick patties so he could start frying them up, it was all she could do not to bounce up and down in her seat with nervous impatience.

_Come on, Sam, where are you…?_

Almost as if he had heard her thoughts, Sam chose that exact moment to come into the kitchen, dressed in a clean T-shirt and lounge pants and his hair still wet and lank from the shower. Dean turned around and gave him a casual wave, having heard his footsteps entering the kitchen, and then returned to his cooking once Sam had dropped into a the chair between Charlie and Castiel. The instant he did Sam gave Charlie a quick wink behind Cas's head, indicating that he had put on the offending aftershave as planned. He really needn't have bothered signaling her, though; she could smell it just fine from where she sat, so overpowering that even though she actually liked Old Spice it was starting to make her feel like she needed to sneeze. Hopefully this would work fast, or she was going to end up with a killer headache just like she did every time she passed through the perfume aisle of a department store.

Thankfully, they didn't have long to wait. It had only been about two minutes when Charlie noticed Castiel beginning to turn pale, a light sheen of sweat visible on his forehead and beneath his eyes. One of his hands was gripping onto the edge of the table, so tightly that his knuckles were white, and out of the corner of her eye Charlie could see the other hand slowly drifting up to rest against his belly.

"Cas, you okay?" Sam asked, just loud enough for him to hear without Dean being any the wiser.

The fact that Sam had leaned closer in the process was probably not helping his nausea, and it took obvious effort for Cas to nod and force a shaky smile, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed and visibly held back the urge to gag.

Sam and Charlie exchanged a look, not sure whether or not they should try to push him a little bit and speed this along, when Dean unknowingly stepped in and did their job for them.

"Hey, Cas, you wanted your cheese cooked into the patty, right?" he asked, holding up a slice of yellow American cheese in one hand and a fistful of shiny pink hamburger meat in the other. "You want one slice or two?"

That sight and smell of the cooking food seemed to be more than Castiel could take. With a quiet gasp he shoved his chair back from the table, bolting from the room with his hand over his mouth and leaving Dean staring after him in surprise.

"Aww, dammit," the hunter muttered, already moving to follow after him.

"I got it," Charlie said quickly, pushing back her own chair and starting down the hall before Dean could protest. "I'm pretty sure the fact that you smell like burgers isn't going to help at this point. And besides, there's still raw meat all over your fingers."

Dean looked down at his hands, grimacing as he realized she was right, and gave a shooing motion with one hand. "Good point. Go ahead."

She didn't need to be told twice. In only seconds she had jogged her way down the hall to the bathroom, not having much trouble finding it even among the bunker's insane number of identical doors thanks to the sickening sounds coming from within.

With more than a little bit of dread – she had never been particularly great with other people getting sick – she pushed the door open and stepped inside, dropping to her knees just behind Castiel so she could rub his back without having to see anything really gross. He tensed at her touch but soon relaxed, and she figured he was just too busy trying to stay somewhat calm while he heaved up his lunch into the porcelain bowl to care that the person beside him wasn't Dean. It was a comfort, regardless, and that was probably all he cared about right then. After a few moments the retching tapered off, and he coughed and spat into the water, reaching up to flush the sickness away before scooting over to lean against the bathtub with a weary sigh.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, his voice even raspier than usual, "that I've been such a terrible host from the moment you arrived, Charlie. You're a guest in our house, this visit should be all about you, and yet here you are taking care of me instead. Besides which, it wasn't polite of me to run off like that earlier this afternoon. I have no idea what came over me, but I apologize."

"Oh, no, please don't feel bad," Charlie said hurriedly. "I… uh… Sam and I did a lot of research while you and Dean were in your bedroom this afternoon, and I actually think I might know what's happening to you."

"You do?" Castiel asked, his expression guardedly hopeful.

"Yeah. But before I tell you, do you promise you won't laugh or call me crazy?"

"Alright." Now his signature head-tilt was back in place, as if he was trying to read some kind of hidden meaning behind her words. "Tell me. And whatever your hypothesis might be, even if it is incorrect, I promise I won't laugh or call you any kind of offensive name."

Charlie took a deep breath and held it for a moment, trying to calm her racing heart, before letting it out in a quick whoosh. "Okay, here goes." She reached into her pocket, pulling out the three blue-capped pregnancy tests within, and held them out to Castiel, who took them from her and stared blankly at them with absolutely no sign of understanding on his face.

"I think you might be carrying Dean's baby. The symptoms you have all match up with the ones a woman deals with in her first trimester of pregnancy, from the nausea and fatigue to the unexplained mood swings, and the fact that it only took a few minutes for Sam's aftershave to make you sick earlier means the aversions to certain smells are in full swing too. And if you use those three tests I gave you, I think we'll be able to get a pretty good idea of whether this idea is totally insane or not."

Castiel stayed silent for a long time, turning the three white sticks over and over in his palm as if they held the answers he sought. When he finally looked up at her again, she was surprised to see that his expression wasn't fearful, angry, or even surprised. Instead, it was as if a sudden peace had come over him, his features tranquil and the slightest of smiles pulling up the corners of his lips.

"I see," he said softly, bringing his free hand up to gently rub his abdomen without seeming to realize it. "That had never occurred to me before, but it would actually explain many of the things that have felt slightly off about my vessel since my grace was restored. But how can this be? I know that a very select few of my brothers and sisters have occasionally been chosen to bear fledglings, but as far as I know I was never considered for that honor."

His face fell slightly, the palm that was against his belly pressing in tighter. "What are we going to tell Dean if you're right? I never knew this could happen, and since I'm occupying a male vessel, I'm sure Dean never planned for us to have any children. What if he decides he doesn't want it? I'm not equipped to raise a child alone, I can't –"

"Whoa, whoa, easy," Charlie cut in, wrapping him up in a tight hug until she felt him breathe out and relax slightly against her. This emotional side of Castiel was definitely going to take some getting used to; she honestly didn't envy Dean in that respect. "Let's just focus on one thing at a time here, okay? Why don't you start by taking those pregnancy tests? All you have to do is uncap them and get a little bit of your urine on the white strips at the top of each one, and then after three minutes they'll tell you if you're pregnant or not. And while you're doing that, I can give Dean a rundown of everything I've just told you. Okay?"

"Alright. Thank you," Castiel said slowly, his relief almost palpable. "So I just need to urinate on these three sticks and come out when –"

"Yup, you got it, bye!" Charlie said hurriedly as Castiel began to unzip himself as casually as if she  _hadn't_  been standing there. Honestly, she mused as she shuffled toward the kitchen and waited for the embarrassed flush to fade from her cheeks, if she really thought about it, she probably shouldn't be surprised by any of what they had learned today. Considering his almost nonexistent level of modesty and the fact that he had one of the most oversexed men to ever walk the planet for a lover, it was probably just a wonder that Castiel hadn't gotten pregnant before now.

She sighed, seeing that Dean had already turned toward the hallway at the sound of her approaching footsteps. If only getting  _him_  to see that could be so easy…

**_*DeanCastiel*_**

As expected, Dean's first reaction upon hearing the results of Sam and Charlie's research was complete and total denial.

"You two are friggin' insane," he spat, burgers long-forgotten as they cooled on a plate on the countertop. "Pregnant?  _Seriously?_  Did you just so happen to be smoking some really good crack while you were doing that 'research,' too?"

Sam sighed, giving Charlie an  _I-told-you-so_  look. "No, Dean. We're serious."

That was apparently the wrong answer, because a moment later Dean whirled on his brother, grabbing a fistful of his shirt collar and pushing him up against the wall.

"You think this is a joke? Cas could be dying all over again, right in front of us, and you're gonna waste time coming up with ridiculous shit like this? What the hell is wrong with you? And Charlie, the hell are you doing getting in on it? I know you and Cas haven't really gotten to know each other much yet, but I still thought you'd care about him more than this!"

Both Sam and Charlie stared at him in silence, at a total loss for what they could say that would make this situation any better. They'd anticipated a little bit of trouble convincing Dean they were telling the truth, but this was proving to be a bit more of a challenge than they were prepared for.

Thankfully, they were spared having to figure out their next step by Castiel, who with his usual obliviousness to awkward situations strode calmly into the kitchen, gave Dean a quick smile, and then held up the three pregnancy tests for Charlie to see.

"Charlie, I urinated on the three plastic sticks and waited the prescribed amount of time," he said with barely-concealed excitement, "and now all of them are displaying small pink addition symbols. What does that mean?"

The tension in the room became thick enough to cut with a knife. Without a sound, Dean came over and plucked the tests from his hand, shaking them slightly as if he could clear the results like an Etch-a-Sketch and glaring at them like they needed salting and burning when they refused to change.

"These can't be right," he said, his voice starting off at a whisper and growing louder with each word. "You're a  _man_ , Cas! You can't have babies! No matter how much you or I might want that to be possible, it just isn't! I already made my peace with that a long time ago, and I would've thought you had too." He looked at his palm again, snorting at the three positive tests that seemed to mock him with something he knew he could never hope to have. "Maybe your grace messed with the tests, or maybe the whole batch is defective, but no matter what, they're  _wrong_."

With that he strode over to the trashcan in the corner of the room and pitched the tests in, slamming the lid down over them with a finality that reminded Sam of slamming the lid shut on a coffin. Beside him he heard Castiel sigh, and when he turned to look he saw the angel's mouth was set in a determined line, eyes soft and yet defiant as he stared across the floor at his lover.

"I was afraid you might say something like that," he said evenly. "And that's why, as with any life-changing medical diagnosis, I found it necessary to get a second opinion."

Before Dean could ask what he meant, he felt a large hand grip his shoulder, and he gasped and spun around so fast he nearly fell over, startled heart pounding painfully against his ribcage as he laid eyes on the stranger who had appeared behind him out of thin air.

The man was tall and well-muscled, with straight dark hair slightly longer than Castiel's and hazel eyes that seemed to sparkle with mirth above the friendly smile on his lips. His jaw was ever-so-slightly stubbled, as if he had just shaved it that morning and it was already coming back in. Most striking, though, was the long white coat covering most of his large frame, with the name "Dr. A. Cohen, OB/GYN" stitched just below the breast pocket.

"Hello," the man said kindly, extending his hand for Dean to shake. "I am Ahiel, one of the seventy angels of the childbed and a close personal friend of Castiel. More importantly, though, I am one of the few angels who was trained both as a healer in Heaven and a doctor on Earth, which I believe will prove beneficial when dealing with a pregnancy as unusual as this one. I will serve as Castiel's attending physician through the remainder of the pregnancy and delivery – if you're agreeable to it, of course."

"Wait, hold up!" Dean snapped, finally mustering enough control of his voice to speak again. "You're saying Cas really is pregnant? That's actually – that's possible?"

"It's very possible," Ahiel said nonchalantly, striding over to Castiel and pulling up his T-shirt so he could place his palm flat against his belly. "And based on the strength of the baby's grace, I'd guess he's about seven weeks along so far. But thankfully in this day and age, there's no need for guessing. Come with me to the infirmary – Castiel was kind enough to tell me where it was – and we can use some equipment I've brought from the hospital to get a better estimate."

"I… you're pregnant…" Dean whispered, staring at Castiel with wide eyes as if the angel had grown two extra arms. "We're gonna be parents… I'm gonna be… Holy shit, I think I need to lay down…"

And then in a moment of weakness he would deny forever afterward, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and before Sam or Castiel could catch him he had fallen over like an old tree, landing on the floor in a crumpled heap.


	6. July 9, 2015 (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. I do not own any of the characters, barring any OCs, in this story.
> 
> A/N: I'm so sorry for putting this out two days late, everyone! I meant to have it up on September 3rd as scheduled, but I had a crazy school and work schedule this week, and on September 2nd I unfortunately had to have one of my two dogs put to sleep. I'm feeling much better now, but it was a sad thing to lose her and it was very hard for me to work up the motivation to write anything until today. I have posted a journal entry about her on my DeviantArt profile page (zanazira dot deviantart dot com) if you're interested in learning more.
> 
> On a happier note, though, this actually turned out to be the longest chapter I've written for this fic to date! In this chapter we're finally going to find out how this little miracle came to be, as well as Cas's due date, and after that the plot is really going to pick up. I have some cool plot twists planned for this fic, so I hope you'll keep sticking with me and enjoy the ride. :)

When Dean finally came to, it took him several moments to notice where he was, and to remember what had happened just a few minutes ago. But the second he realized he was in the bunker's infirmary, along with Sam (who for some reason had changed into a different shirt), Cas, Charlie, and the angel who called himself Ahiel, it all came flooding back. He stood so quickly from the chair he'd been sitting in that it nearly toppled over, giving himself a head rush and almost collapsing right back into it before Ahiel caught him under the arms and steadied him.

"Easy Dean, take a couple of deep breaths," Ahiel instructed calmly, waiting until he was satisfied that the hunter could stand steadily on his own feet before letting go of him. "We don't need you fainting again before we even get the ultrasound started."

"Didn't faint," Dean grumbled under his breath. "Girls faint."

"So, what, you just decided you suddenly needed a nap on the kitchen floor?" Sam asked with a raised eyebrow and the beginning of a smile trying to pull up one corner of his mouth.

"Shut up," Dean snapped half-heartedly. Right now he was too focused on what had happened right before he passed out to care that he was being teased. If what everyone was saying was true, then Cas was honest-to-God  _pregnant_. And that was going to take some  _major_  explaining.

"So, is this really happening?" he asked softly, coming over to where Castiel was perched on the end of the exam table so he could take the angel's hand in his and rub his thumb over the backs of his fingers. His eyes darted uneasily between Castiel and Ahiel, like at any moment they were going to tell him he was on some kind of angelic hidden-camera show and this was all one gigantic prank. "I mean, are you… you're really pregnant?"

"Ahiel has assured me that I am with child, yes," Castiel said evenly, seeming way too calm about this whole thing for Dean's taste.

"But how is that even possible? It's not like you have any of the right equipment for having kids."

"I don't know. I assume Ahiel will explain that to us after he's finished with whatever examinations are required to prove it. He has spent the last one hundred thousand years devoting himself to the protection of expectant mothers and their children, and he is also one of the only other angels in existence that I still consider a close friend. So if he says that I'm carrying, I have no doubt that he is telling the truth."

"Luckily, though, you don't have to just take my word for it," Ahiel cut in before Dean could say exactly how trustworthy he considered any angel but Cas to be. "As I said, when Castiel prayed to me for assistance I decided to bring along some sonography equipment from the hospital where I work. And if both of you are ready, we can go ahead and perform an ultrasound scan to make sure everything's progressing as it should."

Castiel hesitated, looking down at his belly and stroking his palm across it almost reverently, and then turned his attention back to Ahiel with a look of barely-contained excitement on his face. "Yes, I think I'm ready."

"And you, Dean?"

The hunter swallowed nervously. "Yeah. Let's get this show on the road, huh?"

"Okay. Is it alright if the others stay, or would you like it to be just you two?"

Dean looked over his shoulder at Sam and Charlie, who had been so quiet for the last few minutes that he had almost forgotten they were there, and then at Cas, waiting to see what his response would be. After all, he was the one carrying the baby, so if he didn't want anyone else in there with them then Dean wasn't going to argue.

To his immense relief, though, Castiel smiled and without the slightest hesitation said, "Let them stay. This baby will be their niece or nephew, so I'm happy to have them here."

Ahiel nodded, looking pleased. "Alright then, let's get started. I need you to raise your shirt, lie back on the table, and pull down your pants – not completely, just low enough on your hips that I can see your entire abdomen."

Castiel quickly complied, rucking his shirt up to his chest before rolling down the waistband of his lounge pants and stretching out on the exam table. He shuffled around slightly in an attempt to find the most comfortable spot, the sterile paper liner crinkling softly beneath him, and then settled back with a quiet sigh.

"Okay. What comes next?" he asked Ahiel, giving the ultrasound machine with its many probes and sensors a wary glance.

"Next you get to see your baby," the other angel answered cheerfully. With practiced ease he retrieved some kind of handheld sensor from a small holder on the side of the machine, as well as a large tube of translucent blue gel that he uncapped as he got closer to the exam table.

Castiel flinched slightly when a dollop of the cold gel touched his exposed skin, glaring at Dean when an involuntary shiver made his stomach muscles twitch and the hunter laughed softly at him.

"Sorry, I should have warned you that it's a little cold," Ahiel said with a slight smirk of his own. "Now then, I'm just going to place this transducer against your skin so we can see what's going on inside. It won't hurt, and it uses high-frequency sound waves to produce images so there's no danger to the baby. You all just keep a close eye on the monitor here, and I'll explain what it's showing as we go along."

With that he gently pressed the large, rounded end of the sensor into the flesh of Castiel's abdomen, moving it slowly back and forth below his belly button as he focused on the constantly changing – and to everyone but him, indecipherable – images on the screen. Every so often he would give a little nod or make a soft humming sound under his breath while he scribbled notes on a clipboard, and Dean wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing. Evidently Cas wasn't either, because pretty soon he felt the angel's hand tightening around his own, trembling slightly. Apparently he wasn't actually feeling as calm as he had seemed initially, and that realization gave Dean a weird sense of relief; if even Castiel was freaking out about some of this, then maybe the fact that he was still more scared than excited didn't make him a total dick after all.

"Hey, it's okay," Dean whispered, temporarily forgetting his own frayed nerves as the need to comfort his lover came to the fore. He leaned over and kissed Cas's temple, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'm sure everything's good. He's just gotta be thorough, y'know? This isn't exactly something he deals with on a daily basis."

Castiel nodded and swallowed hard, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly before offering Dean a shaky smile. "Yes, you're right. Thank you, Dean."

After a few moments Ahiel paused over a part of Castiel's belly near his left hip, zooming in on something and then freezing the image in place. Dean had absolutely no idea what they were looking at, though, so he hoped the guy would stop with the dramatic silences and say something soon.

"Alright," Ahiel said slowly, pointing to the blurry black-and-white image on the monitor. "I'm sorry I took so long there. I just wanted to see whether there truly was a viable pregnancy or not, and if all the right 'equipment,' shall we say, for childbearing had developed in the right locations. So far, though, everything looks exactly as I'd hoped it would."

The doctor shifted in his seat to give everyone a better view of the monitor, keeping his finger on the screen so he could point out all the new internal organs Cas had inexplicably developed. "Okay, so here is the left ovary and fallopian tube," he said, pointing to what looked to Dean like nothing but a blurry little circle with a squiggly line coming out of one end.

He unfroze the image and moved the transducer to the other side, adjusting the angle a few times until he found what he was looking for. "And… there's the right one," he said, pointing at another circle with a curvy tube coming out of it. "Castiel's grace likely formed these organs near the time of intercourse in order to allow him to produce an egg cell and maintain the necessary levels of female hormones to sustain pregnancy. The process of oocyte growth and ovulation would have been sped up by his grace in order to allow the egg to join with Dean's sperm in time for conception."

Dean cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly, pointedly not looking at Sam and Charlie so he could pretend they weren't getting a play-by-play of what his little swimmers got up to whenever he and Cas were alone.

Ahiel, who was apparently just as oblivious to any awkwardness as Cas was, paid Dean no mind, instead moving the probe slightly downward and more toward the center of Castiel's lower abdomen. He had to try a couple of different positions, but after a moment he smiled, pointing toward something on the screen that looked like a black upside-down egg with a couple of big white blurs in the middle.

"This inverted egg shape is the uterus," Ahiel told them, tracing the edges of it before pointing to one of the white blurry shapes inside. "And right here is the baby." He smiled softly, watching with amusement as both expectant parents' eyes widened in unison. He zoomed in until the two white shapes took up most of the screen, using the cursor to take a few quick measurements and jotting them down. "It looks like my age estimate was accurate, Castiel. Right now you're exactly seven weeks along, give or take one day. Do you see this little circular shape here?" he asked, pointing to the rounder of the two white blobs on the screen.

"Yeah," Dean answered quietly when it was clear that Castiel was incapable of speaking at the moment.

"Well, that's called the yolk sac. In a few more weeks it'll be gone, but for now it's what provides nourishment to the baby while the placenta is still forming. And this," he said, pointing to something that looked vaguely like a small peanut still in its shell, "is your baby. It's only about the size of a blueberry right now, but that's exactly where we want it to be in week seven."

"Wow," Sam breathed, staring at the screen in wonder. "I can't believe you're really having a baby, Cas. That's incredible. Congrats!"

Castiel turned his head and grinned at the younger Winchester, eyes shiny and bright. "Thank you, Sam. I think so, too."

"Hey, what's that flickering part?" Charlie asked, pointing to an area inside the image of the baby which kept blipping between light and dark every few seconds. "Some kind of computer glitch?"

"No," Ahiel said with a smile, moving the cursor over to the flickering point. "That's the baby's heart. At this point in development the heart is still on the outside of the body, so we can actually see it beating. And if we just focus on this area here…"

He pressed a button on the machine, and suddenly they could hear a soft " _wup-wup-wup-wup-wup-wup-wup"_  coming from the machine.

Dean pulled in a slow breath, feeling his eyes beginning to get misty and making a mental note to dust in here more often. Beside him, Castiel tensed slightly, his hand tightening around the hunter's again as his breathing became suspiciously short and hitched.

"That's the heartbeat?" Sam asked, and if Dean wasn't worried that the slightest movement might make the tears in his eyes spill over he would have given Captain Obvious a punch in the arm.

Ahiel nodded, freezing the image again and drawing a quick line between the crests of two heartbeats to measure their frequency. "Yes, and right now the heartrate is about one hundred and forty beats a minute. I know that sounds high, but it's completely normal."

He reached over and switched off the machine with a quiet click, removing the transducer from Castiel's belly and setting it to the side so he could wipe it down later. "Congratulations Castiel, Dean," he said, standing and shaking both of their hands before handing Castiel a damp towel to clean the gel from his skin. "You're both going to be parents before next spring. I've estimated your due date to be February 11th, 2016 – that's another thirty-one weeks from today. I'm sure you're both a little overwhelmed right now just trying to wrap your head around everything, but do you have any specific questions for me?"

"I do," Dean said, wiping the last traces of moisture from his eyes with the back of his hand and glad his voice didn't shake when he spoke. "I'm pretty sure something's wrong with Cas's grace lately. He can't heal himself anymore, and he's been eating and sleeping like a human and puking almost every day. Should we be worried about that?"

Ahiel blinked and clapped his palms together. "Ah, thank you for reminding me. I knew there was something I had forgotten to tell you about. No, the problems with Castiel's grace are nothing to be concerned about, and all of the symptoms he's been experiencing so far are harmless and very common. Creating new life, especially in a body that was not designed to do so, is an exhausting process, and in Castiel's case requires forming entirely new organs and maintaining high levels of hormones that the male body doesn't ordinarily produce. Right now most of his grace is being diverted to the womb so it can help the baby grow and protect it from any outside threats.

"This means, Castiel, that for all intents and purposes you should consider yourself human for the duration of this pregnancy. For the next seven months you will require plenty of water and healthy food, light exercise, and lots of regular sleep in order to stay healthy. Your grace will allow your body to stretch and grow to accommodate the baby, and near the end of your third trimester you'll develop the necessary pathways for a natural delivery. The nausea and fatigue should also fade away within another month or two, so for now just focus on trying to eat several small, light meals that are gentle on your stomach each day. The baby is still drawing nutrition from the yolk sac rather than from you, so just focus on eating whatever you can stomach, even if it isn't especially healthy."

"How the hell did this even happen?" Dean asked, gesturing unnecessarily between himself and Castiel. "We've been having sex for years and each of us bottoms about as often as the other, so why hasn't this happened way before now?" He could feel his ears and neck turning fiery red with the knowledge that Sam and Charlie were getting  _way_  too much information about his sex life right now, but the need to understand what had happened overpowered the need to preserve whatever dignity he might have had left.

"Well, I can't be entirely sure of the exact reason," Ahiel said thoughtfully. "An angel's grace is a mysterious form of energy, and one which isn't completely understood even by other angels. But one thing I do know is that angels never reproduce with anyone but their true soul mate, and even then it's only rarely; without sharing that kind of profound bond with another, though, conception is completely impossible.

"Once the grace senses this true, undying love between an angel and their mate, it will eventually respond by creating the reproductive structures necessary for childbearing – even if one of them is not an angel or they both happen to be of the same sex. I've heard of a small handful of other times this sort of thing has happened, but I've only witnessed it twice myself, so all I can say is that you two are extremely lucky, and you must really be destined for one another if you were able to create something so miraculous."

"It seems I didn't know as much about my own grace as I thought I did," Castiel said softly, his hands clasped in his lap as he once again moved to sit on the edge of the exam table. "I've known about our profound bond for years, but I had never even imagined that something like this was possible between Dean and me. Do you have any kind of reference material we could use? It sounds like I'll probably be dealing with many more unfamiliar sensations in the coming months, and it would give me some peace of mind to know which ones I should or shouldn't worry about."

"Of course," Ahiel said, picking up a small leather bag from the floor and shuffling through it until he pulled out a thick paperback book and handed it to Castiel. "This should answer any general questions you might have, as well as provide a broad overview of how your pregnancy is going to progress. It's written for women, of course, so some things won't apply to you, but the basic principles are the same. I'll be stopping by once a month to check on the baby's health as well, so you can ask me questions then, but if either of you ever feel that something isn't quite right in the meantime, please don't hesitate to pray to me. I'd rather err on the side of caution in this situation, since it's very rare that something like this happens."

"Thank you, Ahiel," Castiel said with a smile, flipping the copy of  _What to Expect When You're Expecting_  over to read the text on the back. "You've been more help than I could have ever asked for."

"Nonsense," Ahiel scoffed, striding forward and giving Castiel a hug and a pat on the back before shaking Dean's hand. "This is what I was created to do. I'd be a sorry excuse for a protector of infants if I couldn't even care for one of my own brothers' fledglings, now wouldn't I? Besides, you've been my closest friend for almost as long as I can remember; it's the least I could do. Well, I'm sure you and Dean both need some time to process everything I've just told you, so unless you have any other questions I'll head back to work. It was nice to meet you too Sam, Charlie."

With that he was gone, disappearing with the sound of soft wingbeats just like Cas had always seemed fond of doing, and barely two seconds later Sam and Charlie were wrapping the expectant parents in a tight group hug.

"Congratulations, you guys!" Sam exclaimed, grinning ear-to-ear. "Holy crap, I'm actually gonna be an uncle. I can't believe it!"

"Heheh, 'Uncle Sam,'" Dean teased, laughing when his brother gave him one of his patented bitch-faces. "You gonna grow a beard and buy an American flag suit before February comes around?"

"Shut it," Sam snapped in mock anger, his intense glare betrayed by the smile fighting to take control of his lips.

"Alright, alright. No need to get your panties in a twist, Samantha. Well anyway, why don't you and Charlie go ahead and eat dinner now? I don't want those burgers going to waste, and it's probably gonna be a while before Cas and I join you."

Sam nodded, immediately understanding that Dean needed some time alone to talk to Cas and not giving him any grief over it, for which the older hunter was grateful. "Yeah, okay. We'll catch up in a little while."

Charlie grinned, leaning forward and giving Castiel one more quick hug before following Sam toward the infirmary door. "Congratulations again, you guys."

The instant the door closed behind her, the tension in the room grew as thick and cloying as smoke. Dean said nothing, hardly even daring to breathe as he sat down in the chair beside the examination table and put his head in his hands. This was actually happening. He was going to be a dad. The thought made his heart swell with happiness, because he'd definitely never thought he'd have the chance to love another kid like he had loved Ben, but at the same time he was completely terrified. He didn't have a great track record when it came to keeping the people he loved safe and healthy, and if it wasn't for God or angels or demons or some other being resurrecting Sam and Castiel again and again, neither of them would still be here with him either. If they brought a helpless baby into this life and he wasn't able to protect it… Well, suffice it to say the monsters of the world wouldn't have to worry about trying to kill him anymore, because that kind of loss would probably destroy him on the spot.

A moment later he was brought out of his brooding thoughts by a warm hand on his shoulder, the touch obviously meant to be comforting despite the fact that its owner was vibrating from head to toe with minute shivers. Dean covered Castiel's hand with his own and the angel swallowed hard, his eyes wet and his lower lip trembling slightly before he bit down on it in a futile attempt to hide his distress.

"Dean, say something, please," Castiel said hoarsely, barely able to suppress the tremble in his voice enough to speak. "I… I had thought this news would make you happy. I knew you had wanted to be a parent for a long time, and even though we didn't think it was going to be possible for us I… Was I wrong? Do you not want to have a child with me?"

Those words rushed over Dean like a bucket of icy water, and in an instant he had wrapped his arms around Castiel and pulled him off the exam table, hugging him back-breakingly tight and burying his mouth and nose in the angel's messy dark hair. "No, Cas, no, of course I do. I promise I do," he rasped, feeling his own eyes beginning to water when Cas bit back a quiet sob of relief and hid his face against Dean's collarbone. "Baby, look at me."

Cas reluctantly lifted his head, and Dean gave him a watery smile and used the pad of his thumb to wipe away the tears that had trailed down his cheeks. "Cas, I promise you I'm happy about this. Don't you even doubt that for a second, okay? I mean yeah, it's gonna take some time to wrap my head around the fact that my  _male angel boyfriend_  is pregnant, but we're freakin' having a baby! I'm gonna get to be a dad! Why the hell wouldn't I want that, Cas? Especially when it's with you?"

"I don't know, Dean," Castiel answered slowly, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands and beginning to color with an embarrassed flush. "But I'm guessing it might have something to do with the same hormonal changes that continually cause me to burst into tears. And I have to say," he added with a sniffle, giving Dean a grateful smile when he grabbed him a Kleenex so he could blow his nose, "I don't particularly like that aspect of pregnancy. It's starting to make me into… what do you call it? A 'walking chick-flick moment?'"

Dean gave a deep laugh, feeling a genuine smile stretch across his face, and wrapped his arm around Cas's shoulders as they started walking toward the hallway. "Yeah, well, don't worry too much about that. I'd say being pregnant kinda gets you a free pass." On impulse he dropped to one knee, lifting up Cas's shirt and pressing his ear against the skin of his belly in an attempt to make out even the tiniest hint of the heartbeat they'd heard on the machine.

"Dean, what are you doing?" Castiel asked, chuckling softly when Dean's hair started to tickle him.

"Shh. Trying to hear the heartbeat."

At this Castiel really did laugh. "Dean, I don't think it's possible to hear the baby's heartbeat through my skin without that machine. Besides, even if that is possible, it's too early. The only thing you'll be able to hear right now is that I'm hungry."

"Ah, well, it was worth a try." He stood up again and placed took Cas's hand, giving him a kiss on the cheek. "So, you think the baby wants a burger, or something else?"

"I don't think the baby has the ability to distinguish between different foods yet, Dean," Castiel said, head tilted to one side in confusion. "It will receive all of its nutrition through the umbilical cord, and by that point everything will have been pre-digested, so –"

"Joke, Cas, it was a joke," Dean cut in before he could ramble on too much. "It's just another way of asking what you want for dinner."

Cas blinked, taking a second to file this information away for later. "Oh. Well in that case, yes, I think the baby would very much like a burger."

"You got it."

As they made their way up toward the kitchen, Dean mentally prepared himself for the barrage of questions they would surely be facing from Sam and Charlie. The thought surprisingly didn't bother him, though, because for the first time since the angels fell, everyone in his little family was together, healthy, and happy. Despite the fact that he had only recently been cured of the Mark and just about every supernatural creature in the world wanted his head on a freaking silver platter, right now Dean felt like nothing in the world could dampen his newfound happiness.

And that feeling was wonderful.


	7. August 3, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> A/N: Hi, everyone! This is going to be a bit of a long author's note, but please bear with me - there are a lot of important announcements this time.
> 
> So once again, I'm sorry for putting this out a couple of days late. I've been having some health issues lately (more details can be found on my profile page) so getting things done on schedule has been kind of difficult. On the plus side, though, I finally have the outline for the entire rest of this story written, so I know exactly how long it will be and how each chapter will progress.
> 
> This story, when it's finished, is going to have a total of 15 chapters, and will probably end up being close to 70,000 words - the longest story I've ever written. That's all thanks to you readers - without your support, I doubt I'd ever have gotten past the prologue. It will be completed in June of 2016, and once it's finished I'm actually going to be turning it into a series, with some sequels, timestamps, and one-shots already planned for the future.
> 
> Finally, I've started including a pregnancy timeline next to the date at the start of each chapter, for those who might want to keep up with how far along Cas is and how long he has left before his delivery date (which is calculated at 38 weeks.) With that, enjoy, and I apologize again for the delay. :)

**August 3, 2015 – 10 weeks, 4 days**

_The August night was unusually cold as Dean trudged through the Odds Fellows Cemetery in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and he pulled his jacket tighter around himself as a chill wind blew across the dry grass and tousled his hair. He was on the trail of a family of ghouls, and had traced them back to this location; now all he had to do was wait for them to come out for their nightly feeding and he could end the sons-of-bitches' killing spree._

_He had just hunkered down behind a crumbling old headstone, shotgun at the ready, when he heard the swish of footsteps in the grass behind him. He whirled around, prepared to blow the head off of whichever ghoul had been foolish enough to come so close to him, but stopped short when he instead spotted a dark-haired man in a long tan coat._

_"Cas, what are you doing here?" Dean asked as the angel continued making his way toward him between the old headstones. "You should go back home where it's safe for you and the baby, okay? I'll be back by tomorrow."_

_Castiel didn't answer him, didn't even acknowledge that Dean had spoken, and he immediately grew worried, his instincts screaming at him that something wasn't right._

_When Cas got close enough to touch Dean grabbed his arm, giving him a gentle shake. "Cas? Did you hear what I said?"_

_"Yes, Dean," Castiel finally answered, his voice oddly soft and husky. "But I just couldn't wait to see you for one more second." He sighed and leaned into Dean, nuzzling and nipping at the hunter's neck as he moved one arm out from behind his back to reveal a large paper bag. "I brought you some refreshments; you shouldn't hunt on an empty stomach, after all."_

_"Cas, what's going on with you tonig –"_

_"Shh…" Castiel held up a finger in front of his lips and winked at him, reaching into the bag and retrieving a large piece of cherry pie on a paper plate. "I spent all evening making this just for you, Dean. You aren't going to deny me the pleasure of feeding it to you after all my hard work, are you?"_

_Dean had no idea what was happening anymore but he could feel one of the angel's fingers slipping down behind the waistband of his jeans, tugging their bodies closer together, and he swallowed, shaking his head when it became apparent that speaking was beyond him right then._

_"Good," Castiel hummed, picking up the soft, sticky pastry between two fingers and lifting it up toward Dean's parted lips. "Now open wide…"_

_He numbly obeyed, pulling his mouth open farther and preparing for what was sure to be the best pie he had ever –_

BRRRZZZZT! BRRRZZZZT! BRRRZZZT! BRRRZZZT!

"Aww, dammit!" Dean muttered to himself, snatching his phone out from under his pillow and debating whether or not to throw the thing across the room for interrupting such a wonderful dream. With a groan he turned off the built-in alarm clock and reached over to switch on the lamp on the bedside table, closing his eyes and sighing as he waited for the rest of his body to wake up just a little more. Beside him Castiel stirred and slowly blinked his eyes open, scrunching up his nose and snuffling into the pillow before pressing himself closer against the warmth of Dean's body and drifting off again.

The sight brought a smile to the hunter's face. Even though he and Cas had been sharing this bed every night for months, he didn't think he was ever going to completely lose the sense of amazement he felt every time this ancient and powerful creature lay down to sleep beside him. It was still almost inconceivable to think that the angel of the Lord who had traveled through the depths of Hell to free his soul from its imprisonment and breathed life back into his broken body was now willing to let his guard so far down and trust Dean, who was nothing at all in comparison to Castiel's magnificence, to keep him safe from danger.

He rested his palm against the bare strip of skin where Castiel's shirt had ridden up, gently cupping the soft, barely-detectable swell of his belly and marveling at the fact that there was really a tiny life growing inside his angel.

In spite of the fact that nearly a month had passed since Ahiel had confirmed the presence of a baby in Castiel's womb, Dean was surprised by how hard it still was for him to wrap his mind around the idea that he was going to be a father. He was definitely excited, and of course he was going to be there for Cas every step of the way, but he just couldn't help expecting something to come along and tear this beautiful gift away from him at any second. After all, that's how everything else in his life had gone for almost four decades. How could he be sure all of their newfound happiness wasn't going to crumble into pieces the way everything else seemed destined to do?

"You're overthinking this again, aren't you?"

Dean startled slightly; he had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed Castiel was awake. "How'd you know?"

Castiel smiled and laid his head on Dean's shoulder, a warm puff of air tickling his neck as the angel huffed a laugh. "I've spent years studying you, Dean. I know that look well by now."

Dean pressed a soft kiss to the crown of Cas's head, letting his fingers trail idly through the dark, wavy locks. "That's still creepy when you say it out loud, you know."

"Don't try to redirect the conversation," Castiel said sternly, propping himself up on one elbow so that Dean was forced to meet his eyes. "I know you're frightened, and I know you think something is going to happen to take our little one away from us the way every other person we love has been taken away at some time or another. I know this, because in the back of my mind I'm afraid of that too.

But this," he said softly, his eyes softening and lips unconsciously pulling up into a smile as he looked down and placed a hand on the slightly softened skin between his hipbones. "This is nothing short of a miracle from God. I truly believe He wants us to finally move on, Dean, for you and me and Sam to build a life for ourselves and find our own happiness in spite of all of the mistakes we've made. This is His way of telling us we are loved and forgiven, and I have faith that He will never allow our child to be taken from us."

Dean sighed softly, offering Castiel a shaky smile. "Thanks for the pep-talk, Cas. I'm sure you're right." He turned around and stood up from the edge of the bed, stretching lazily as his mouth opened in a jaw-popping yawn. "How's your stomach doing this morning? Do you think you can handle some breakfast, or do you wanna just sleep in a little more?"

Although Cas's morning sickness had improved slightly over the last month, it still tended to be pretty touch-and-go for the first ten or fifteen minutes after he woke up each day; after the first few days of watching Cas wake up feeling perfectly fine only to turn green as soon as he got his feet on the floor, Dean had convinced him that it was probably better to take it easy for a few minutes before he started moving around. He had also taken to placing a plate of saltine crackers and a glass of flat ginger ale on the bedside table every night before they went to bed, because it seemed to help nip any nausea in the bud if Cas had a little something on his stomach before he got up.

"I think I can handle a little bit of food this morning," Castiel answered, sitting up slowly and carefully and making sure to stay still for several seconds before getting to his feet. "Something light like eggs and toast, maybe? Please just don't cook any bacon; the smell is still too much for me to handle."

Dean gave a dramatic gasp and placed his hand over his heart. "No bacon? I dunno, Cas, are you sure that baby's really mine?"

Castiel smirked and punched his arm. "Assbutt."

"Bacon-hater."

He took Cas's hand in his and together they made their way toward the kitchen, Castiel calmly leaning against Dean's side in a silent affirmation that everything was going to be just fine. And by the time Dean started pulling pots and pans down from the cabinets, ready to make breakfast for all of them, he had already forgotten that he was ever worried in the first place.

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

"So I just move this 'cursor' over here and press this button to open the 'search bar?'" Castiel asked Sam as the younger Winchester sat beside him at the war room table, calmly and patiently teaching him how to use the computer to search for information.

He had initially asked Dean to help him, but it hadn't gone very well; Dean wasn't much of a computer whiz himself, and combined with the fact that Castiel was easily confused by technology and needed to be talked through it at a snail's pace, the lessons had quickly deteriorated into frustrated bickering that had required Sam's intervention before it turned into a fight. Dean had since retired to their room to sulk in silence, and Castiel was content to let him go for a while. He loved Dean with everything he had, and nothing would ever change that, but occasionally his quick temper and constant use of references to things Castiel did not understand could be very irritating, especially now that his ever-fluctuating hormones were making him more emotional than he had ever been. A little space was probably good for them both.

"Yep, you've got it," Sam said with an encouraging smile. "Now, once you've got the search bar open you can type in whatever you want to look up, and then if you hit the Enter key it'll pull up a list of websites that might have information on that topic."

"I see," Castiel muttered, staring down at the many keys and wondering exactly how humans had come to engineer such complex things as computers. The last time he had been on Earth prior to the breaking of the Sixty-Six Seals had been two-thousand years before, and while the humans of that time had also been skilled in the use of tools and even then could build dwellings much more complex and beautiful than any others in the animal kingdom, the creation of the "Internet" was something that Castiel could never have anticipated.

"Hey, Cas?" Sam asked cautiously, wary of getting on Castiel's sometimes unpredictable nerves like his brother had already done.

"Yes?"

"Not that I mind teaching you all of this – I really don't – but why the sudden interest in using the computer? You never really seemed interested in doing any Internet research yourself before now."

Castiel swallowed, hoping Sam couldn't see how nervous the question made him. "There are a few things I was interested in learning about how my body will change during pregnancy. The book Ahiel lent me was helpful, but I think there's probably more information on the computer, and I thought it might embarrass you or Dean to have to look up these things for me."

"Oh. Uh, okay," Sam answered, thankfully seeming to believe him and obviously a little embarrassed at the thought of whatever Castiel might be looking up, if his sudden fidgeting and the way he was stealthily trying to stand up and make his way out of the room were any indication. "Well, just be careful about which sites you go to, and feel free to ask me or Dean whether or not something's legitimate, even if it might be a little awkward. And just as a general rule of thumb, if something seems like it will lead to porn, it probably does, so just play it safe and avoid it."

"I will. Thank you, Sam."

"Any time."

With that the younger Winchester turned on his heel and made his way back toward his bedroom, trying not to make it obvious that he was just anxious to get away from the awkwardness of being near Cas while he typed out "how my body is going to change during pregnancy."

Castiel watched him go without comment, waiting several seconds after he heard Sam's door click shut before reopening the search tab. With one last furtive glance around him and a soft sigh, he took a deep breath and typed in the two words that had been eating at his conscience ever since the day they had discovered his pregnancy:

_James Novak_

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

"Dean, we need to talk."

Dean had been stretched out and lounging on their memory foam mattress when Castiel walked in, only partly paying attention to the pawn shop reality show playing on his laptop as he flicked through their copy of " _What to Expect When You're Expecting_ " and read the "daddy chapters" that the angel had specifically marked for him with little sticky notes. At the sound of those ominous words, though, he immediately snapped to attention and sat up, the book falling shut as it lay forgotten beside him.

"Cas? What's wrong?" he asked gently, his heart sinking at the grave expression on his lover's face. That string of words had an infamous reputation, and even though Cas probably wasn't aware of it, they historically tended to preface one of a few very specific, very life-altering announcements:  _"I'm pregnant," "Someone in our family just died," "I'm sleeping with your brother,"_ or  _"I'm breaking up with you._ " His rational mind knew that Cas would never actually say any of those things (well, any except the first one) but apparently that wasn't enough to keep his imagination from running a little wild.

"I need your help with something," Castiel replied cryptically, sitting down on the bed beside Dean. "Can I ask that of you, even though the end result might make our lives slightly more difficult?"

Dean was so relieved he could have laughed, and despite the slight flutter of anxiety he felt at how unusual it was for Cas to dance around the subject like this, he smiled and threaded their fingers together so he could give his hand a squeeze. "Yeah, sure. Whatever you need."

Castiel nodded, almost like he was giving himself some kind of silent encouragement, and then took a deep breath before saying, "We need to go to Pontiac, Illinois, preferably as soon as possible."

Dean blinked at him for a moment, his mind taking a few seconds longer than he would have liked to remember why that name sounded familiar, and then it hit him. "Pontiac? Isn't that –"

"It's where Jimmy was from, yes," Castiel finished. "Ever since the day Ahiel confirmed that I'm with child, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Jimmy and how much he sacrificed so that we could accomplish our mission to stop the Apocalypse. I wondered what he would think if he saw me now, happy and safe and expecting a baby after I tore him away from his own family."

The bitter guilt in Castiel's words made Dean's stomach turn. "Cas –"

"So today I looked up his family's whereabouts," Castiel continued as if he hadn't heard. "And Claire, his daughter… she needs help."

"What happened?" Dean asked, almost afraid to know when he saw the way Cas's eyes shone with sadness.

"Shortly after I took – after Jimmy gave his vessel to me for the last time," Castiel answered haltingly, his voice almost a whisper as he looked down at his lap. "Jimmy's wife Amelia was hit by a drunk driver as she was walking home from work. She was killed instantly."

"Shit…" Dean whispered, gripping Castiel's hand tighter when he felt it start to shake.

"Claire was sent to live with her grandmother, but she passed away three years ago, and Claire has not had a stable home since. She has been arrested several times for shoplifting and running away from various group homes, and after being caught for stealing again last night the police are holding her in some kind of 'youth detention center' until a foster home or relative can be found." He looked up to meet Dean's eyes, his gaze determined and intense despite the thin line of tears pooling near his lashes. "We need to get her out."

Dean sighed, not liking what he was about to say. "Cas, I'm not sure there's a lot we can do for Claire now. Even if we find her, she might not want to come with us. After all, you're kinda wearing her dead dad's face." Castiel flinched slightly, but didn't deny his words. "And even if she did want to, she's been passed around in the system so much that it'll be damn near impossible to break her out. CPS is a pain in the ass to work with on a good day, and when you're posing as her dad who disappeared without a word for six years…"

"I know," Castiel said softly, his free hand clenching around a fistful of the bedsheets. "But we have to try, Dean. It's my fault all of this happened, and while I love you more than life and I wouldn't change any of what we have now for the world, I owe her at least that much." A single tear broke free of its confines, dripping from the ends of his long lashes to land with a soft  _plop_ against the back of Dean's hand. "She deserves a chance at finding her own happiness, especially after all that my selfishness has put her through."

Dean wrapped his arm around Cas's shoulders, pulling him close and kissing away the moisture from the corners of his eyes. "Okay, Cas," he whispered. "Okay." He stood up from the bed, making his way toward the door so he could give Sam a rundown of the plan and have him start looking up directions to the detention center. "Pack a duffel with a few days' worth of clothes. We're heading to Illinois."

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

Castiel tugged lightly at his shirt collar as he made his way up the steps to the Pontiac Youth Transition Center the next morning, hoping the people inside wouldn't be able to see exactly how nervous he was about being here. He, Dean, and Sam had all left the bunker only an hour after Cas had asked Dean about it, making the ten-and-a-half-hour drive in just under nine and staying overnight at a fairly nice hotel (because Dean was not willing to risk Cas catching some sort of illness or infection staying in one of their usual crap motels) before getting up and driving to the group home this morning. Castiel would have felt a lot more secure having Dean and Sam with him, especially because he tended to say the wrong thing fairly often in situations like these, but as Sam had pointed out, it was already going to look incredibly suspicious for "Jimmy" to come back for Claire after six years MIA; bringing two strange men in with him on top of that was guaranteed to set off all kinds of alarms with the social workers.

So in spite of his own apprehension and the irrational fear that someone was going to be able to see the almost imperceptible thickening around his waist and guess that he was pregnant, Castiel made his way inside, striding up to the reception desk with as much confidence as he could muster and waiting patiently for the woman working there to finish her phone call before speaking.

"Yes?" she asked somewhat impatiently.

"I'm here to see Claire Novak," Castiel answered calmly, making a mental note to try and keep some of the gruffness out of his voice when the woman's eyes widened and she unconsciously leaned away from him.

"What's your relation to her?" the receptionist asked after a moment, bored expression back in place.

"I'm her father."

"Can I see some ID, please?"

"Of course." Castiel reached into his pocket and retrieved Jimmy's wallet, which he had fortunately kept all of these years, passing it over to her and sending up a silent prayer that she would not notice the driver's license had expired over two years ago. Thankfully she only glanced at it long enough to make sure his last name really was Novak before handing it back to him, nodding her head toward a long hallway on their left.

"Claire's in the isolation room, 106. Just talk to the orderly and he'll let you in to see her."

"Thank you."

"Mmhmm."

Turning his back on the desk Castiel made his way down the hall, watching the descending numbers outside each door until he came to the one that read "106." He didn't know what an "orderly" was, but there was a tall African-American man wearing a name badge standing at a nearby circulation desk, and he thought that might be a good place to start looking. Before he could even open his mouth the man noticed him and began walking over, sizing him up for a moment before offering a faint smile.

"Are you Mr. Novak?"

"I am," Castiel said, relieved to see that someone must already have passed along word of his arrival.

The man nodded and turned toward the hallway he had just come from. "This way." He reached into his pocket and produced a set of keys hanging from a large keychain, and when they reached 106 he slid one of them into the lock, pulling open the metal door with practiced ease.

"Novak," he said to someone just out of Castiel's sight. "You have a visitor." Claire must have given him a questioning look, because he added, "Your father's here to see you."

Castiel took that as his cue to enter, brushing past the other man so he could step into the room and see Claire for the first time in six years.

What he saw was bittersweet. The young woman sitting before him was most definitely Claire Novak – he hadn't spent nearly as much time around her as he had her father, but he would recognize that face anywhere. Her features had lost most of their childlike softness, her eyes no longer wide and cheerful but narrowed and cloaked by heavy makeup; her hair was styled strangely, one side braided and the other loose and flowing, and it looked slightly greasy, as if it had not been washed in a couple of days. Her expression was hopeful but also hard and cold, and her knuckles were raw and bruised, the way Dean's often looked whenever he lost his temper and punched a wall or a tree in frustration. She was much too young to look like that, like all of her innocence and trust in humanity had been stripped away against her will, and the sight of it tugged at Castiel's heart.

"Hello, Claire," he said, finally breaking the silence between them. "It's been a long time."

Claire slowly stood, saying nothing although her bright blue eyes never left his, and Castiel turned to the orderly.

"Can we have a moment?"

The man nodded. "I'll be outside." He swung the door shut behind him as he left, and Castiel noticed Claire tense at the sound of a bolt clicking back into place.

"I am not your father," Castiel said softly, mentally kicking himself as the tiny spark of hope in Claire's eyes immediately disappeared with his words.

"Right. 'I am not your father,'" she repeated in a mocking imitation of his voice. "Those were the first words you ever said to me, remember?"

"I remember everything."

"So do I, Castiel," she growled. "My dad… Is he still in there?"

"No." He hoped she could hear the sincere regret he felt with that admission. "The human soul, it can only occupy a body while it retains a certain… structural integrity, and this vessel, it was… It was ripped apart on a subatomic level by an archangel."

"Well then how are you…?"

"I was reassembled. Your father is in Heaven now."

"Well yay for him. Anyway, good talk," Claire said acidly as she turned her back on him. "You can get the hell out of my life now."

"Claire –"

"What?" she snapped, whirling around to face him with her lower lip trembling and unshed tears in her eyes. "Huh? What? You took everything from me. What do you want now?"

"Nothing, I just – I came here to help you."

"Why?"

"Because I've hurt you so much," Castiel said gently, feeling a strange urge to embrace her when he saw a stray tear break free and roll down her cheek. "I'm going to get you out of here."

"And how exactly do you plan to do that?" Claire said bitterly, giving the orange bag on the floor a half-hearted punch. "Sandy's the CPS worker on duty this week, and there's no way in hell she's gonna let you sign me out. She's got a stick up her ass on a good day, and there's no way she's gonna believe any excuse you can come up with about why you suddenly decided to come back after disappearing for six years."

Castiel nodded, doing his best not to let his frustration show through at this latest complication. "Don't worry about that. Just be ready to leave tonight. I'll come for you then."

The tiniest flicker of a smile flashed across Claire's face before she schooled her features back into neutrality, and when she spoke her voice was guardedly hopeful.

"You promise?"

Castiel nodded, turning around and knocking on the door three times to signal the orderly to open. "I promise," he said, giving her his best attempt at a reassuring smile. The door swung shut behind him and he sighed, making his way back down the hall toward the front entrance and hoping that this, at least, would be one promise to the Novak family that he would be able to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reader Poll: Do you think I should reveal the baby's gender during an ultrasound later in the fic, or wait until the birth? Leave a comment and let me know!
> 
> A/N: All dialogue from "Hello, Claire..." to "Because I've hurt you so much," was taken from Supernatural episode 10x09 "The Things We Left Behind." I claim no ownership, and am only borrowing some of their words for that scene. ;)


	8. August 4, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> A/N: Hey, everyone! It's been a while, huh? I am so, so sorry for how long this chapter took to publish. It gave me more trouble than any I've done so far, and I actually ended up rewriting the entire outline four days ago and starting the chapter over from scratch because I hated it so much. :(
> 
> But it's finally finished, and I should be updating this story one more time before New Year's Eve before moving to the new publishing schedule of "2nd Saturday" instead of "1st Thursday" of each month.
> 
> I'll warn you now, this chapter is going to be very angsty, and there won't be much happiness or fluff to be found. It's crucial to setting up a later part of the story, though, so please bear with the temporary angst - I promise it will get better. (Chapter 9 will be almost all fluff, with a pinch of drama and then more fluff, so hopefully it'll make up for this one.) ;)
> 
> (All art for this chapter was created by me, using The Sims 3.)

**August 4, 2015 – 10 weeks, 5 days**

In spite of the fact that Castiel had promised he would come back for her later that night, Claire Novak still couldn't help the feeling of anxiety that had washed over her from the moment he left and closed the door behind him. After all, this was the same angel who had taken her father Jimmy Novak from her and her mother six years ago without a hint of remorse. And when by some miracle Jimmy had managed to cast him out, Castiel had used the then twelve-year-old Claire as a bargaining chip, convincing her to become his vessel herself so that he could blackmail Jimmy into giving up his body a second time.

So needless to say, she had no interest in being friends with the winged weirdo, and his word didn't mean very much to her at all. Still, the thought of staying in this place for even one more day made her want to rip out her hair, and letting Castiel bust her out was probably the only chance for escape she would see for a while. She wasn't about to let her grudge against him get in the way of that.

With no way to entertain herself besides staring at the white walls until he came for her, the hours ticked by at a snail's pace. She watched with dread as the sun sank and disappeared behind the horizon, counted the seconds ticking by on the clock as the night wore on, and no matter how patiently she waited or how hard she wished for it, there was still no sign that anyone at all was coming for her.

By the time the digital wall clock showed that it was past midnight, Claire had resigned herself to the fact that no matter how much she might have hoped for it, Castiel was not going to be honoring his promise to her, and had probably never intended to at all. Lights-out had started two hours ago, and the only night security guard hardly ever made it past eleven-thirty before he was face-down and snoring on his desk; if Castiel really was coming, then he surely would have by now.

With a frustrated growl she lay down on her cot, clenching her right hand and thumping it down against the pillow. She shouldn't have expected any different than this – after all, none of the adults in her life had ever been there for her like they said they would. Still, no matter how much she hated herself for it, she had actually hoped that this one time might be different.

Not seeing any better options for the moment, she pulled the thin blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind enough to drift off to sleep and glad no one else was around to see the pair of twin tears that snuck past her eyelids to roll down her cheeks.

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

"Cas, are you sure this is really what you want to do?" Dean asked as the two of them crept along the back wall of the detention center and toward a small side door, which Castiel had told Dean was the closest entrance to the isolation room. "I don't wanna be a downer here, but there's no guarantee that Claire will even want to come live with us. Hell, she's here because she's a 'troubled child' who not even professional foster parents can deal with. I'm not sure this is really the kind of thing a pregnant angel and a couple of hunters are equipped to deal with."

"I know," Castiel said quietly, inwardly feeling just as much uncertainty as Dean about their chances of success. "But she's also the daughter of the man who willingly gave up his body and everything that was dear to him so that I could complete my work on Earth. Without him, you and I could never even have met. And," he added solemnly, "we would never be expecting a child of our own. We owe it to Jimmy to at least  _try_  to help her."

Dean took a deep breath and blew it out as a sigh, nodding and flicking on the flashlight he always kept in his jacket pocket.

"Yeah, okay Cas. You're right. Hold this flashlight for me, would you?" he asked as he opened his lockpicking kit and retrieved a couple of small, thin tools from inside. They slid easily into the key slot in the doorknob, and Dean furrowed his brow as he moved them back and forth with the precision of a surgeon. "It looks like they've got a pretty cheap lock on this door, so if I can just… Yup, there! Got it."

He turned the knob and the door opened easily, allowing him and Castiel to slip through one after the other without a sound. Castiel pulled the door almost closed behind them, then turned to look for Dean, who for some reason had walked several steps ahead rather than staying near the door. It took him a few moments before he realized why the hunter had left him behind: just at the end of this entryway was the keypad to the security system, which could alert the entire security team that they were there if it wasn't quickly disarmed.

As Dean stepped up to the keypad, already prepared to do whatever it was he always did to deactivate one of them, he stopped short, smirking and chuckling under his breath before letting Castiel catch up and then continuing on his way.

"Man, I love when security guards get too cocky to remember to set the alarm," he said, a second before his face grew serious again. "But you still need to stay behind me, okay Cas? I don't want to risk you or the baby getting hurt if we run into anyone on the way."

Castiel nodded his agreement, not as comfortable with breaking and entering as Dean was and so not wanting to speak and risk detection unless absolutely necessary. Then the two of them continued down the dimly-lit hallway, their quiet breathing and the light scuffs of their shoes against the tile the only sounds to be heard in any direction. Before long Dean spotted the door to room 106, and he covered the distance in three easy strides, immediately setting to work picking the lock with the same tools he had used to open the outer door. In less than half a minute he had worked it open too, and he gestured for Castiel to enter the room with a broad sweep of his arm.

"You get Claire and get out of there as quick as you can," he whispered. "I'll stay here and watch for any trouble."

"Alright," Castiel whispered back, ignoring the sudden flutter of nerves in his belly as he strode through the doorway. On one side of the room, just barely distinguishable thanks to the faint starlight filtering in through the high window, he made out a vaguely human-shaped lump under the blankets which he knew must be Claire, and he made his way over to her at a quick clip. Her breathing was slow and even, which told him she was sleeping, so just before he touched her shoulder to wake her he placed a hand near her mouth, ready to cover it if she screamed.

Thankfully this turned out to be unnecessary. As soon as Castiel touched her Claire gasped and startled slightly, breathing shallowly and rapidly for a few seconds as her brain processed the identity of this intruder and realized he wasn't a threat. With a yawn and a quiet groan she looked over at the digital clock, which now read 4:57am, and glared blearily up at Castiel.

"Couldn't you have come a little earlier?" she whispered. "It's already almost morning again!"

"My apologies," Castiel answered, not sure exactly how to interpret her question. "It took a long time to figure out how to break you out without the use of my grace, so this was the soonest we could get here."

"Wait, you didn't use your angel superpowers? Why not? Wouldn't that have been easier?"

"I…" Castiel hesitated, realizing this was the kind of conversation he had been dreading all along and that it was probably not a good idea to drop this particular news on Claire two minutes after meeting her – or even for a couple of weeks, ideally. "It's complicated. I can tell you later, but for now we need to go before someone comes and sees us."

Thankfully that seemed to satisfy Claire for the moment, and she nodded and stood up to follow Castiel out of the room without a word. Dean joined them as soon as they stepped through the doorway, handing Claire a leather bag that must have been hers, judging by how relieved she looked to have it.

In another minute they were outside again, and Dean swung the door shut behind them before retrieving his cell phone and texting Sam, who was parked just out of sight of the detention center, waiting to pick them up whenever they were ready. Just a few moments later the Impala pulled into view, its engine rumbling loudly enough in the silence that even Dean winced a bit, and Castiel opened the back door and ushered Claire inside, sliding in beside her and shutting the door as quietly as he could while Dean clambered into the passenger seat.

And after a quick glance to the back to make sure everyone was safe and accounted for, Sam pushed the gas pedal to the floor, tires squealing around a couple of sharp turns before they bit into the smooth asphalt of the open road and sped toward the outskirts from Pontiac, Illinois.

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

Sam and Dean drove through the day and into the next evening, taking back- and side-roads instead of heavily-policed highways and stretching a drive that should have taken ten hours from start to finish into almost fourteen as a result. They stopped only for occasional gas, food, and bathroom breaks – and, admittedly, they did have to stop for the latter a little more often than usual thanks to the ever-shrinking bladder capacity Cas had been dealing with for the last week-and-a-half.

Dean was able to tell when he started getting uncomfortable before he even had to speak up, though, and covered for him by saying it was him that needed to stop thanks to the coffee he'd been chugging since dawn. Claire teased him a couple of times about being too old to handle his caffeine and needing to get his prostate checked, which got a stifled chuckle or two out of Sam, but otherwise she didn't seem to suspect anything. So even if it wounded Dean's pride a little, he was happy to take one for the team and keep up the ruse until they got home.

At around the twelve-hour mark Dean pulled into the parking lot of a tiny roadside diner just outside of Junction City, Kansas, which he happily noted served both burgers and pie in addition to some kind of hippie kale salad that Sam would most likely order. They all sat down at a corner table and placed their orders, Cas forgoing any food or drink like he had all day long despite the fact that Dean knew he must be starving by now. There wasn't much of a choice, though; Claire had never seen him consume anything before, and doing so now might make her suspicious. So Castiel sat and watched the Winchesters and Claire eating their meals with obvious envy, and Dean made sure to eat very slowly so that he could sneak the angel the bigger half of his burger and fries later.

Apparently Cas had been staring a little too obviously at Claire's French fries, though, because after a beat she dipped one in ketchup and popped it into her mouth, raising an eyebrow as she asked, "What? Something wrong?"

"Oh, uh, no. Nothing," Castiel answered hastily. "It's just… You could eat a vegetable, you know."

Claire smirked and bit into another fry. "Ketchup's a vegetable." At the confused look Castiel gave her she laughed, brushing a loose lock of hair over her shoulder. "You know, there's something different about you. The Castiel I met as a kid, he was crappy. Like super stuck-up and a dick and you just wanted to punch him in his stupid angel face."

Castiel tried to smile back, although it came out as more of a grimace instead. "I don't think I was that bad," he protested weakly.

"You totally were."

"Yeah, I gotta side with Claire on this one, Cas," Dean chimed in with a shit-eating grin. "You  _were_  kind of a dick in the beginning."

Castiel glowered at him across the table, the  _"Watch it, Dean,"_  coming through crystal-clear. Dean held up his hands in surrender, muttering "Yeesh, touchy, touchy," and earning a sharp elbow in the ribs from Sam before giving up and focusing on his dinner again.

"Well, be that as it may," Castiel continued once he'd glared at the hunter for another moment or two, "I'm glad to be able to help you now. And once we get back to Lebanon, I'll be happy to provide you some money so you can pick out some new clothes and some furniture for your room –"

"Wait, wait.  _'My room?'_ " Claire asked slowly.

"Yes. I think it's fairly common for most teenagers to decorate their bedrooms to reflect their own unique 'style,' correct? Or would you rather use one of the ones Sam and Dean have already put together?"

"Yeah, uh, thanks but no thanks," Claire answered, her lips pulled into a tight line. "No offense, but living with a bunch of older guys I barely know doesn't really sound like my cup of tea."

Castiel tipped his head slightly to one side, confused by this response. "But where else do you expect to go? You're still a minor, Claire, and now you're also a runaway. It isn't safe for you to be out there on your own; you'll probably still need us for some time, at least until you're eighteen."

Claire stared at him for several seconds, an unreadable expression on her face, and then sighed, nodding ever so slightly. "Yeah, okay. I guess you're right. Hey, um, you mind keeping an eye on my plate here for a second? I have to pee."

"Oh. Um. Yes, of course. Go ahead," Cas answered quickly, and Dean smothered a laugh at how adorably flustered he was having someone speak as bluntly to him about bodily functions as he always did, himself. Claire got up and hurriedly made her way toward the restrooms in the back of the building, brushing close by Castiel's chair as she went. They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, each reflecting on all that had happened in the last two days and how much their lives were about to chance, and then Castiel turned to the Winchesters with a small smile. "Well, that discussion went more smoothly than I expected."

"Yeah," Dean said slowly, gaze locked on the hallway where Claire had disappeared. Maybe he was just assuming the worst, but something didn't seem right about how easily she'd given in. Well, if in doubt, there was one way to be sure… "Hey Cas, I used up most of my extra cash filling up at that last rest stop we visited. Can you get the check and I'll pay you back at home?"

"Of course, Dean," Castiel answered, reaching into the pocket of his jeans to retrieve his wallet. But a moment later his brows drew together in confusion, and he patted his other pockets and his gray T-shirt as if his wallet might have somehow transported itself there without him knowing. "I… my wallet's gone."

"Son of a bitch! I knew it," Dean snarled, all of his patience for Claire's aloof, sarcastic attitude evaporating in an instant. He shoved his chair back and tossed a couple of twenties on the table, not caring about the change, before storming out of the front doors with Cas and Sam close at his heels. Cas seemed to be breathing a little heavily for just jogging across the restaurant, which Dean found a little strange considering how physically fit he was, but he had no time to dwell on it because a second later he spotted their target. Just ahead was a small, dark silhouette creeping between the benches and streetlamps at the back of the restaurant, and before anyone could even form the words to stop him Dean had sprinted toward the runaway teen, all stealth and grace, and grabbed her arm with a growl.

"Jeez! What the hell?!" Claire screeched in surprise, futilely struggling against the hunter's hold.

"I could ask you the same thing," Dean said lowly, reaching into her leather bag and retrieving Castiel's wallet. "So what, we drive all the way out to Illinois, bust you out, and offer to give you a roof over your head, and you decide the best way to thank us is stealing Cas's wallet and taking off?"

"Claire, why would you do this?" Castiel asked softly, placing his hand on Dean's arm and cutting off his tirade before he could really get started. "Surely you know it's wrong."

Claire snorted. "Oh, it's 'wrong,' huh? What about when you killed my dad? Was that wrong to you too? Or does tearing someone's life apart even mean anything to an angel?"

"Of course it does," Cas answered shakily, and Dean turned his full attention onto his lover, something about the unsteadiness of his voice not sitting right with him. "I've always regretted having to take your father away from you, and I always will. But I didn't kill him."

Claire's hands balled into fists, and her words continued to rise in volume until she was almost shouting. "Yeah? How do you figure that? Because if you hadn't come into our lives in the first place, he and my mom would still be here and none of this would have happened!"

Cas looked her in the eyes, remorse written on every inch of his face, and whispered, "I know. And I'm so sorry to have hurt you like that…"

Then all of a sudden his face seemed to grow five shades whiter, and with nearly no warning his knees buckled, legs giving out underneath him.

"Whoa, whoa, hey!" Dean shouted, grabbing him around the chest just before he could hit the ground and gently lowering him onto one of the nearby benches. He placed his hand on the clammy skin of Cas's neck and pushed his head between his knees, wrapping his arm around the angel's shoulders when he swallowed hard and groaned.

"Dean…" Castiel muttered between shallow breaths, just conscious enough to be disoriented and clingy.

"I know, just take it easy, you're okay," Dean murmured softly, gently rubbing Cas's back and letting him lean into him with another weak groan and a nauseous hiccup. "Are you back with me now, or do you still feel like you're gonna faint?"

"'m with you…" Cas rasped, clamping his eyes shut and laying his face against Dean's chest. "Just dizzy…"

"That's probably because you haven't had anything to eat all day," Dean chided, shaking his head and giving the back of Cas's neck an affectionate squeeze. "Just sit here and catch your breath a little longer, and then we'll get something light on your stomach, okay?"

"Okay," Cas answered quietly. "Thank you, Dean."

Dean huffed a laugh, amused by the way Cas remembered his manners even when he could barely stand on his own. "No problem."

"Okay, what the hell is going on?" Claire asked, her eyes narrowed as she stared at Castiel. "First you bust me out of the detention center with lockpicks instead of just teleporting me out, then you don't order any food but keep staring at mine like you want to vacuum it off the plate, and now you almost faint when you get a little stressed out? What the hell aren't you telling me? Are you human now or what? Because in case you've forgotten you possessed me once before, and I know for a fact that you never got hungry or tired or sick then."

Castiel took a steadying breath and sighed, sitting up straight beside Dean and meeting the glare of Claire's electric blue eyes with his own calm, intense gaze. "No, Claire, I'm not human – not entirely, at least." He placed a hand on his abdomen, cupping his palm over the barely-noticeable curve before saying, "I'm carrying a child, and I have been for nearly eleven weeks. The process is draining, though, even for an angel, and all of my grace is currently being used to sustain the fetus. That is why I'm unable to use my powers, and why I need to do things now like eat and sleep and urinate."

Claire stared at him for several seconds, not saying a word, and then her lips thinned into a fine line and she said, "You're not kidding, are you? You're really not kidding."

"No. I am not kidding."

"So, what," she asked with a slightly hysterical laugh. "You're like the new Virgin Mary or something, carrying some miracle baby from God in a stolen man's body?"

Castiel didn't respond right away, his gaze darting to Dean's for some kind of support, and all at once Claire seemed to understand.

"No," she growled. "Oh, fuck no.  _Fuck that!"_

"Claire, please –" Castiel started.

"Shut up!" she snapped, turning her back on them and heading for the street. "Don't talk to me like you're my friend, or say you're just trying to 'help me.' I'm not staying with you, now or ever, so just screw off and leave me alone!"

"Where are you planning to go, then, if not with us?" Sam asked evenly, only his expression showing how truly pissed off he was by her attitude.

At this Claire whirled around to face him, rage and hostility twisting her expression into a horrible sneer. "I don't know, and I don't care!" she spat, glaring daggers at Dean and Castiel. "Anything would be better than staying with some pregnant freak of an angel and the sick bastard who knocked him up!"

Before any of them could even think of a coherent response she was flagging down a passing car, which slowed and stopped so she could open the door and get in. Just as she was about to get in and close the door, Castiel seemed to break free of his shock, stepping toward her with a soft, "Claire, wait."

"What?" she snapped, one hand already on the door handle and ready to jump in and speed off at the slightest hint of a confrontation.

Castiel sighed, giving her a smile so sad that it would have broken anyone else's heart, and pulled three hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet, striding forward and holding them out to her.

"I understand that you don't want to stay with us, and I respect your decision. But please, at least let me help you buy food and a safe place to stay until you get settled. I owe you at least that much."

Claire took the money into her hand and stared at it for a long moment, seeming to settle some kind of internal conflict within herself before meeting Castiel's gaze again. Then with a snort of derision she tossed the bills to the ground, rearing back and spitting in Castiel's face before lowering herself into the passenger seat of the car.

"I don't want anything from you, Castiel," she hissed as the bewildered angel wiped the spittle from his cheek. "You wanna help me? Then stay the fuck out of my life. I never want to see your stupid face again."

With that she slammed the passenger door shut, and the old black car sped off into the night, carrying her farther and farther away until it disappeared from view altogether.

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

The drive home was tense and silent, no one speaking a word about what had happened or what they were supposed to do now that Claire had disappeared. Dean didn't even feel like playing his classic rock tapes, too worried about how stone-faced and quiet Cas had been ever since they began the last leg of their journey home. They had all known there was a chance Claire wouldn't take well to coming with them. And even though it wasn't actually Castiel's fault, finding out about the pregnancy in the sudden, unexpected way she had definitely didn't help matters. Still, none of them could possibly have imagined it would blow up this badly.

By the time they pulled into the bunker's garage it was just after nine o'clock, and everyone clambered out and shuffled their way into the bunker, tired down to their bones and wanting nothing more than to forget any of this had ever happened. Castiel made a beeline for their bedroom as soon as he reached the foyer, not even sparing a glance backward to tell Sam goodnight or see if Dean was following him, and Dean sighed, wishing he could kill Cas's sadness the same way he would a demon.

Almost as if he'd read his mind, Sam placed a hand on Dean's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"He'll be okay," Sam said with a weary smile. "Just take care of him like you always do, and he'll feel better in no time."

"Yeah. Thanks, Sammy," Dean replied with an answering smile. "I'm gonna go see how he's doing now. Get to bed at a decent time tonight, okay?"

"Yes, Mother."

After giving his brother a good-natured flip of the bird, Dean made his way down the hall to his and Cas's bedroom, hoping the angel wasn't going to pretend to be asleep to avoid talking tonight. When he opened the door, though, he was both relieved and saddened to see Castiel perched on the edge of their bed, his head in his hands and his breathing just slightly too steady to be called crying.

He didn't look up when Dean came in, too emotionally exhausted for talking, so instead the hunter sat down beside him on the bed, wrapping his arm around Cas's shoulders and pulling him into a one-armed hug. That was apparently just what Cas needed, because a moment later he turned and practically melted into the embrace, burying his face in the hunter's T-shirt and allowing himself to give in to the heart-wrenching sobs he had been holding back ever since they had left the diner in Junction City.

They didn't say a word the rest of that night; they didn't have to. Words would never have been enough to express the depth of the hurt Castiel felt, nor to offer any relief. Instead they held onto each other, Castiel curling into Dean's chest as he cried away the grief and anger and fear that threatened to overwhelm him, Dean pulling Cas close and rocking them back and forth as he rubbed his back and told him everything would be okay as many times as he had to to make it true.

By midnight Cas had finally fallen asleep in his arms, too exhausted even for sadness, and Dean was beginning to nod off himself. He thought for a second about waking Cas up so he could change out of his T-shirt and jeans and into some pajamas, but thought better of it, gently lifting him up and laying him down on his pillow before sliding in beside him and pulling the covers over them both. With a tiny, sad smile, he leaned over and kissed Cas's cheek, cupping the tiny bulge where their baby was growing beneath one calloused palm before whispering "We'll all be okay, Cas. I promise," and turning off the bedside lamp.

And just before he fell asleep, hand still splayed protectively over Cas's belly, he sent up a prayer to anyone who might be listening:

_"_ _Please let Claire be okay out there. Please, for Cas's sake, just let her be okay."_


	9. September 10, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters are the property of Eric Kripke. Sadly, I do not own any of these guys.
> 
> A/N: Hello, everyone! I'm finally back! A ton has happened in the five months since I've posted a new chapter, but I'll put those details on my FF.net profile page so you can read them later. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this return to mpreg!Cas. There will be just a tiny bit of angst at the beginning of this chapter, left over from the last one, and the rest will be nothing but fluff. Brace yourselves, though, because in two more chapters things are going to get intense. I've spent months writing, rewriting, and polishing this chapter, so I hope you all enjoy. :)
> 
> The art for this chapter was made by the wonderful Psycho-Flames and DiruFan on DeviantArt. Go check out their work - it's all amazing!

**September 10, 2015 – 16 weeks**

"By the sixteenth week, the uterus has grown to the size of a cantaloupe, and the baby is anywhere from three to five ounces and four to five inches long," Castiel murmured as he sat curled beneath a blanket in one of the plush armchairs in the bunker's library, reading aloud from his copy of " _What to Expect When You're Expecting._ " It was a perfect day for some quiet reading, chilly and damp and crisp with the first scents of early autumn. Castiel had woken unusually early that morning, full of energy and ravenously hungry, and seeing as Dean was still asleep and Sam had left before dawn to take care of a mischievous spirit that was damaging a family's home several towns away, he decided that the time left over after sating his cravings would best be spent tucked away somewhere warm and quiet.

He had already read this book cover to cover more than once, so he already knew most of the information inside by heart, but for some reason he still couldn't help but open it up and scan a few of the pages at the beginning of each week. Maybe it was because of the maternal hormones coursing through his body, or maybe he was just allowing himself to become overly sentimental, but somehow reading about their child's progression as it actually happened each week made the pregnancy feel more _real_ to him, as if he could really see and feel exactly how the baby was growing and changing within him day by day. It filled him with an excitement that was impossible to put into words, unlike anything he had ever experienced before as an angel or human, and he did not have to ask to know that Dean felt the same.

Until about three weeks ago, though, he had all but forgotten the joy of waiting for their child to arrive, too worried and heartbroken over failing to earn Claire's forgiveness to find much excitement in anything.

_The first few weeks after that failed attempt at bringing her home had been hard on the entire Winchester household, but none so much as Castiel. He had gone after her not only because he genuinely cared for her, but because he owed more than he could ever put into words to her father, Jimmy. When he saw how much hatred she held toward him, how much he had taken from her without even realizing it, he knew that he had failed not just her, but also her father, who had only ever asked him to keep Claire safe in his absence._

_No matter what Dean did to comfort him, he could not seem to bring himself out of the dark fog that had taken over his every thought. Food seemed to lose its taste, television and books ceased to hold his interest, and even lovemaking with Dean failed to stir anything more profound than a temporary carnal pleasure within him. He spent most of the first week confined to the bedroom or the library, avoiding both Sam and Dean in favor of sitting alone with his thoughts. He plastered on a fake smile whenever one of them asked if he was alright, took a few bites of food whenever Dean would cast a worried glance at his still-full plate, but before long he would inevitably end up curled over the toilet in the master bathroom, heaving so violently he could barely pull in a breath as his body rejected whatever nourishment he tried to force into it. This only served to frustrate him more, because he wanted so badly to be able to provide nutrition for the baby and his own body seemed to take joy in defying him at every opportunity. He knew Dean and Sam worried about him – if he was being honest with himself, so did he – but he couldn't seem to find a way to shake this deep-seated feeling of failure, to gain back the contentment and anticipation he had felt before everything went so terribly wrong._

_The turning point came on the first day of his thirteenth week of pregnancy, when Ahiel came to the bunker to perform his first second-trimester examination. They had only just begun, Ahiel taking measurements of Castiel's vitals, when the doctor's expression darkened, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the number indicating Castiel's weight on the scale. With ice in his voice, he had said, "Sam, Dean, would you mind leaving the room for a few minutes, please? I need to speak to my brother alone."_

_Castiel felt his heart beginning to pound as he watched the others file out, especially when Dean did not even look back at him, and by the time Ahiel turned his attention back to him he was tense from head to toe._

_"Now then, Castiel," Ahiel said slowly, tapping his fingers against the top of the clipboard in his hands. "I see here that instead of gaining the amount of weight I had recommended for you at your last appointment, you have actually lost five pounds. Dean tells me that you've barely eaten for the last two weeks, and that even when you do you almost always regurgitate whatever you've consumed within minutes." He set the clipboard down on the table, his expression softening as he placed a hand on Castiel's knee. "You must know that this isn't good for the child, Castiel. If your morning sickness is worsening I can prescribe you something to help, but I cannot do anything for you without knowing what you're feeling. I know you would never do anything to endanger your baby deliberately, so please tell me, Brother – what's happened to you?"_

_And just like that, Castiel finally broke, clutching onto Ahiel and sobbing desperately as he told him about everything he'd thought and felt since Claire's disappearance. He told him about the constant feelings of guilt and failure, the fear that he would fail his own child the way he failed Claire, the constant nausea that made his stomach turn even when it was empty and growling with hunger. Ahiel did not say a word the entire time, letting him say everything he needed to without interruption and then giving him a few minutes to pull himself together afterward._

_When he finally did speak, it was with a sad, understanding smile that nearly made the pregnant angel start crying all over again. He motioned for Cas to lie down on the table, which he did without protest, and then pulled up the angel's shirt so he could examine the baby._

_"Castiel," he said gently, handing him a tissue to wipe his eyes and nose, "I understand that you feel you've failed your vessel's daughter, and as a fellow angel I understand exactly how poorly we tend to react to failing those we consider family. But whether you are willing to believe me or not, I can tell you that you have not failed Claire. Her childhood may have been changed by her father's service to you, but her choices still are ultimately her own. Someday she may choose to come back to you, or she may not, but you've done all you can for her now and you must take comfort in that fact._

_"You have a child of your own that needs you," he said firmly, placing his palm against the skin of Castiel's abdomen and closing his eyes as he focused on separating the pulsing aura of the child's grace from the stronger aura of Castiel's that surrounded it. "And that is all you need to worry yourself with right now. Dean loves you deeply, and Sam cares about you, but neither of them can help you if you do not help yourself. For them, and for the child who depends on you, please put Claire from your mind for the time being." He smiled, then, reverently stroking his palm across the tiny bump of Castiel's belly. "Our Father has blessed you with a great miracle, my brother. Do not despair, but rejoice and be glad."_

_At that moment Castiel felt a strange warmth emanating from within his lower belly, and it was as if all the grace of Heaven had descended to fill Castiel with comfort and peace. He placed a hand on his stomach, wondering what was causing this sudden change, and Ahiel chuckled, striding over to the door so he could open it and let Sam and Dean know it was alright to come back inside._

_"It seems the child does not want you to feel sad anymore, either."_

Life had largely returned to normal for Castiel and the Winchesters after that. Although he still thought of Claire from time to time, he no longer felt such a terrible, crushing guilt when he did so, a fact which he credited entirely to the way his baby's grace had reacted with his own that day. Ahiel had prescribed him a few days' worth of anti-nauseants, which enabled him to get his body accustomed to regular meals again so that the vicious cycle of going without food and being sick whenever he did eat would finally stop. Dean doted on him a little too much at first, almost as if he thought Cas was an invalid now instead of simply pregnant, but Castiel said nothing about it. After all, he really had given the hunter cause to believe that for a time, and Dean tended to hover when he worried, so the least he could do was put up with a little extra "mother-henning" if it helped Dean work out his own anxiety.

So by the time his sixteenth week rolled around, Castiel was back to normal and feeling better than he had in weeks. Most of the unpleasant symptoms from his first trimester had finally tapered off, especially the constant exhaustion and nausea that had plagued him for nearly two straight months. He still suffered from occasional dizziness when he stood too quickly or went too long between meals, but overall he was finally starting to feel like an expectant parent, rather than someone with a chronic illness.

 _"And look it, too,"_ he mused, stroking his hand over the rounded globe of his belly that now protruded fairly noticeably above his hips. For the last month it had been steadily growing, the final traces of his previously well-defined abdominal muscles disappearing as his stomach began to curve upward and outward to accommodate the life developing rapidly inside. He was truly beginning to look forward to the prospect of raising a child now, especially when that child's father would be Dean Winchester.

 _"Your father and I cannot wait to meet you,"_ he cooed softly in Enochian, rubbing small circles over the area where he thought the baby most likely to be. _"I do not even know what you look like, but I already know that I love y–"_

"Cas? You up already?"

Castiel dropped his hand from his abdomen and looked up at the sound of Dean's voice, chuckling softly as the hunter wandered into the library with his hair still mussed from sleep and his gray terrycloth robe hanging precariously off of one shoulder.

"Yes," he finally answered as he carefully slipped a bookmark between the pages he had been reading and gently closed the book. "I woke up craving food about an hour ago, and by the time I finished eating I was too alert to go back to sleep."

Dean strode across the room and wrapped an arm around Castiel's shoulders, leaning down to kiss him before he gave a mischievous smirk. "Oh yeah? And what combo did the baby come up with this time?"

Castiel sighed wearily, not understanding why Dean seemed to get so much amusement from his pregnancy-related cravings when he himself found them completely maddening, and then reluctantly mumbled, "Carrot sticks dipped in caramel sauce…"

Dean laughed, and Castiel frowned and reopened his book, huffing and shrugging Dean's hand off of his shoulder as a hot blush of embarrassment worked its way up his cheeks and ears.

"Aw, c'mon, don't be like that," Dean said, the smile still audible in his voice as he tousled his fingers through Castiel's hair. "It's all part of the experience, remember? Besides, that's actually not a bad one, at least not compared to last week when you mixed that Sriracha with –"

"Do _not_ talk about that," Castiel cut in, feeling his stomach flip at just the mention of his ill-fated hot-sauce experiments a week before. "I haven't vomited once since then, and I would like to keep it that way."

"Alright, alright," Dean said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender and plopping down into the chair right beside Castiel's. "No more Sriracha-talk. But I did actually come out here to ask you something. How would you feel about taking a trip down to Wichita today, maybe seeing a movie? Just to get out of the house? I know it's farther away than Concordia, but there are some awesome restaurants and stores down there I've been wanting to check out, so I figured you and I might as well make a day out of it."

"That sounds like a wonderful idea," Castiel answered, standing from the chair and stretching until his spine popped. "When would you like to leave?"

"Just let me get dressed and brush my teeth, and then if you're ready we can hit the road."

"Okay. I'll go get dressed, too." He strode down the hall to their bedroom with Dean, retrieving a suit-and-trenchcoat outfit that Dean had bought him soon after he moved into the bunker. He loved the familiarity of the long coat; he hadn't realized how much he had missed it until Dean had offered to replace it for him. Also – although he felt no need to admit this to anyone – it was currently the only clothing in his wardrobe that still fit, not including pajamas.

…Or at least it was supposed to have been.

As he slipped on the pants and tried to pull up the zipper, he realized with no small amount of irritation that it would no longer pull more than a quarter-inch upwards. The button and belt were no better, stopping more than an inch short of closing no matter how hard he pulled on them, and the shirt now just barely hung past the bottom of his belly, so tight across the back that he could barely move. How could that be? These clothes had been almost too big for him before, just like they had always been. Granted, he hadn't worn them in nearly a month, seeing as he had been in no mental state to go anywhere at all, but he couldn't have gotten so much bigger that quickly, could he?

With a frustrated grunt he flopped backward onto the bed, sucking in his stomach as much as he could and holding his breath until he somehow managed to get the button closed. With a sigh of relief he stood up, slightly uncomfortable with the waistband digging into his skin but happy with this small victory. He bent forward to fasten his belt over it, only to gasp as the overly-stressed button on his pants flew off with a "pop!" bouncing off of the wall and landing somewhere underneath the bed.

"Uh… Cas? What's going on?"

Castiel jumped at the sound of Dean's voice behind him; he had almost forgotten the hunter was supposed to be coming back for him. "Dean, I… um…" he stalled, feeling a hot blush of embarrassment working its way into his cheeks for reasons he could not understand. Finally, realizing it was too late to preserve his dignity at this point, he huffed and glared down at his pants, muttering, "Apparently I've outgrown even my largest outfit. Unless you want me to go to the movies with you in my pajamas, I'm afraid I won't be able to accompany you today."

Dean, to Castiel's immense relief, was either too kind to laugh or too afraid of what the angel might do to him if he did (although he was fairly certain he did hear a quiet snicker while his back was turned.) After a moment he strode out of the room, returning with a pair of Sam's jeans that had been pinned up around the legs and an old T-shirt, and barely five minutes later the two of them were seated in the Impala, listening to her purr as she sailed over the distance between them and Wichita.

 

 

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

The drive to Wichita seemed to fly by in no time. Castiel had dozed off and begun snoring quietly less than a half-hour into the drive, lulled to sleep by the sound of Dean's old classic rock tapes, and this gave Dean even more time to fine-tune his plan for making this day perfect. Before long the hunter was turning the Impala off of the interstate and into the parking lot of an enormous shopping center, slowing down to a crawl as he looked for a spot that was as close to their destination as possible. Beside him, Cas blinked owlishly and snorted awake, brow furrowing in confusion as he sat up straighter in his seat and took in the scenery around them.

"Dean? Are you sure this is the right address?" he asked with a yawn. "I do not see anything that looks like a movie theater here."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Dean answered, sliding into a spot right beside one with a sign marked "Stork Parking – Expectant Mothers." He cut the engine, chuckling at the way Cas's eyes flicked between him and the sign with a deer-in-the-headlights kind of confusion in them. "Alright, you ready?"

"I… I don't think I understand," Castiel said slowly, still squinting at the cartoonish drawing of the long-necked bird with a bindle gripped in its beak as if it was purposely hiding something from him. After another moment his eyes widened, comprehension dawning on his face, and he glanced suspiciously at Dean. "We were never really going to see a movie, were we?"

"Nope," Dean said with a sly smile, opening up his door and getting out of the car while he waited for Cas to do the same. "I wanted to surprise you – I know you've never been baby shopping before, so I thought that might be more exciting than seeing some overpriced movie we can just watch on Netflix in a couple of months. And since this place," he pointed up at the enormous letters across the front of the store spelling out _Babies-R-Us_ , "is supposed to have just about everything a baby could ever need and then some, I figured it was a good place to start."

Castiel didn't say anything for several moments, his eyes growing slightly misty as his hand drifted up to touch his belly – a nervous habit he had developed in the last couple of months and which Dean found absolutely adorable – and then he turned and wrapped his arms around the hunter, giving him a brief kiss.

"Thank you, Dean. I think it's a wonderful idea."

"I hoped you would," Dean said softly, taking his angel's hand as they began making their way into the store.

As soon as the glass doors slid open, though, both of them stopped in their tracks, momentarily overwhelmed by the incredible array of baby and toddler products spread across the entire building. Just from where they stood Dean could see bottles and pacifiers, diapers and creams and powders, onesies with matching booties, plush toys and rattles and teething rings, and more clothes for both mothers and babies than he had ever seen in one place before.

He slowly walked forward, just barely aware that Cas was still beside him, overwhelmed by the seemingly endless variety of colors, patterns, textures and shapes that filled every shelf as far as he could see. He had thought he knew everything about babies and baby needs, since he had practically raised Sammy from infancy, but apparently a lot had changed about baby shopping since the early 1980s.

"Okay, Cas," he said after taking a moment to get his thoughts back on track. "I think the best way to do this would be for us to split up and each cover half of the store. Why don't you take the left side and pick out some toys and clothes and things for the baby – you'll need to pick things that say they're for newborns – and I'll go over there and look at the bottles and diapers."

"Alright…" Castiel said uncertainly, looking a lot meeker than Dean was used to seeing.

"Hey, don't worry," the hunter said lightly, wrapping an arm around Cas's shoulders and giving him a squeeze. "If some of the stuff you pick is too big, we can always use it later. The point is just to have fun and pick out some stuff you think the baby will like. Oh, and I guess try to pick some stuff that's kind of gender-neutral for now, since we don't know whether it's a boy or a girl."

Castiel blew out a deep breath, the tension leaving his face and a small smile moving in to replace it. "Yes, that sounds good. I will do my best."

"You'll do fine," Dean assured him. "And if you have any questions, you can always just call me or come find me over there."

Cas nodded and turned to start making his way toward the baby clothes, and Dean traced his own path over to the diaper aisle, picking out a box of Huggies (he normally wasn't a brand-name kind of guy, but after watching Sammy go through nearly three years of constant diaper rash caused by cheap, off-brand diapers, he wasn't about to cheap out here) and throwing them into the cart along with a box of wipes, a tube of diaper rash cream, and a bottle of baby powder. It took him only another minute or two to pick up a few bottles; it wasn't likely they would need many of them, anyway, since Castiel had already started asking Ahiel about breastfeeding at his last checkup. Finally, after adding a couple of pacifiers to the basket, he was able to make his way over to the place he had pretty much planned this entire trip around: the maternity section.

He was more than a little self-conscious as he walked past the shelves full of back supports, pregnancy pillows, and nursing bras, especially once he passed under a flowery pink-and-brown sign labeled "Just for Moms," but thankfully there were no other expectant parents anywhere around, and he said a small prayer of thanks for that to whoever might be around to hear it.

He already knew Cas's normal measurements; he had been the one to take them down just weeks after the angel moved into the bunker, so that they could get him a properly-fitted FBI disguise for investigations instead of the oversized, cheap one Cas had bought for himself soon after he became human. Because of this it took him only a few minutes to locate several things in Cas's size, which he figured to be just a couple of sizes higher than usual around the waist thanks to the new curve of his middle, although the real challenge was finding anything masculine enough for the angel to wear it without looking totally ridiculous. Thankfully there were a lot of stretchy maternity T-shirts in stock as well, some with small patterns and logos on the front and some completely bare, and Dean made sure to pick out a few of these in various sizes and colors so that Cas would always have something simple and comfortable to wear no matter how much larger he grew. He also found an off-white wife-beater style tank top, which he knew was one of Cas's favorites to wear around the house whenever it was hot outside, and a double-layered knit T-shirt with white sleeves underneath that he knew Cas would appreciate on a cold, rainy day like today.

Next to go into the basket were a few pairs of maternity jeans with pregnancy panels already sewn in, although he unfortunately could not find any without some kind of floral or swirl pattern stitched into the back pockets, some stretchy yoga and sweatpants for around the house, and a back support which Ahiel had advised them would definitely be necessary in the coming months. Finally, he picked out an enormous body pillow called a "Snoogle," which he thought was a really, really stupid name, but according to several online review sites was an absolute necessity for helping expectant moms distribute their weight more equally and sleep better at night.

Once he'd placed the overly-expensive pillow into the basket he ran through his mental checklist one more time, wanting to be sure he'd gotten everything his angel might want or need for a while, and then made his way over toward the baby toys and clothes, where he quickly spotted Castiel examining some kind of tiny, baby blue onesie.

"What'd you find so far?" Dean asked as stepped up behind the angel and draped his arms across his shoulders.

"Much less than I had hoped to," Castiel said with a sigh, bringing his hand up to clasp both of Dean's against his chest as he looked around at the myriad of colorful and, to him, completely foreign items that lined the shelves. "I never realized a single child needed so many things to remain content. I am beginning to realize that I am much less prepared to be a parent than I thought I was, Dean."

Dean huffed a soft laugh, smiling when it tickled Cas's ear and made him squirm slightly. "Well, that's why this baby's got _two_ parents, right? Besides, no parent ever knows what they're doing the first time around, angel or not. If it hadn't been for Sam, I wouldn't have a clue either." He leaned in and kissed the soft shell of Cas's ear before pulling away and giving his shoulder a reassuring pat. "Trust me, Baby, I'm nervous as hell too, but you don't have to worry as much as you think you do. Just relax and enjoy it, huh? You'll catch on quicker than you think if you just go with the flow, I promise."

Castiel sighed and gave Dean a weak smile, placing the onesie back into the bin where he had found it and digging through the pile for one in a different color. "I will do my best, but I can't promise I will be able to be as relaxed as you are, Dean. Angels as a species are not very gifted in that. We are used to having a clear set of directions to follow in every situation – 'going with the flow' is typically not something we are taught to do."

Dean smirked. "Yeah, well, I'd say you crossed completely out of 'typical angel' territory the second that pregnancy test came back positive. And speaking of which," he said, reaching into his own basket and pulling out some of the articles of clothing meant to fit Cas at his current size, "Why don't you go to the dressing room and try these on? We need to make sure they all fit before we get 'em, and I bet they'll be a hell of a lot more comfortable than Sam's giant pants."

"These do look better, yes," Castiel said, examining a pair of the jeans Dean had handed him and stretching out the panel lining the waist. "Would you mind examining the selections I've made while I'm gone? I want to make sure I picked the correct sizes."

Dean gave him a thumbs-up, already shoulder-deep in another bin of clothes as he searched for a smaller size in one of Cas's selections: a plain white onesie with a black and yellow bee and the words "Bay-Bee" stitched onto the front. After another minute of digging he found it, smiling triumphantly as he threw it into the basket with the others which, surprisingly, were all actually the correct size. He was just about to turn around and go meet Cas in the dressing area when a flash of bright yellow in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned toward it and instantly broke into a smile, tossing the little bundle into the basket. Cas was going to love it.

With that he made his way over to the dressing rooms, where Castiel was just finishing up trying on the clothes Dean had picked for him. He had on the stretch jeans and the double-layered knit shirt, and if Dean was being honest it really did look good on him. The fabric of the sweater was loose enough that the shape of Cas's belly was just barely visible, and would be completely unnoticeable to anyone who didn't know to look for it. The jeans fit him well, showing off the shape of his thighs and butt without hugging too tight in the waist, and he looked more at ease in those clothes than he had in any others in quite a while.

"I like these clothes very much, Dean," Castiel said when he saw the hunter, tugging a wrinkle out of one of his shirtsleeves. "There were only two shirts that did not fit, but the rest are very comfortable. Thank you."

"Anytime," Dean answered, bending down to pick the discarded shirts up off of the floor so he could hang them back up on their way out. "Hey, why don't you just leave those clothes on and put your other ones in the basket? We can just pull off the tags and pay up front."

"Yes, that sounds like a good id– Dean, what is this?"

Dean turned around to see what Cas was looking at, mentally kicking himself when he saw Cas holding up the little "Value Pack" he had grabbed a few minutes earlier. Inside was a yellow-and-black-striped bumblebee onesie, complete with little wings in the back, bee socks with wings on the toes, bee mittens, and a big plush bee on top of it all. He had hoped to make that a surprise, but forgot to hide it under all the other items before coming back here.

"Well, I wanted to surprise you, but…" He shrugged. "You like it?"

"I love it," Castiel said warmly, smiling down at the package and stroking his finger over the plush bee to feel how soft it was. "And I think the baby will too." He started to say something else and then stopped, looking down as his stomach and sighing when it growled loudly enough for even Dean to hear. "Apparently what the baby wants now, though, is food."

"Well that," Dean said with a grin as he and Castiel began pushing their carts toward the checkout line, "I can definitely take care of."

**_*DeanCastiel*_ **

"So what do you think about 'Jackie?'" Dean asked as Castiel dipped his last French fry into a tiny pool of ketchup at the edge of his plate. They were seated at the back of a little burger joint called _Jimmie's_ , which Dean had found on his phone and decided looked good. It had definitely lived up to expectations, and apparently Cas had loved it too because he'd inhaled it so quickly Dean almost hadn't seen him do it. He hadn't done much but nibble on his own burger yet, too busy looking up possible baby names on his phone and pitching them to Castiel for approval. So far, though, none had met whatever undeclared standards the angel had set for his hypothetical daughter, so they hadn't even made it to boys' names yet.

"Dean, we are not naming our child after a song by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils."

"Damn, I forgot Metatron beamed all that trivia stuff into your head. Okay, so what about Stev-"

"No, we are not naming a girl after Stevie Nicks, either."

Dean sighed dramatically. "Fine. What name would you suggest then, since none of mine are making the cut?"

Castiel chewed slowly on a French fry, then swallowed and said, "For a girl, I would suggest 'Etharzi Maria Winchester.' The first name is an Enochian word that means 'peace,' and the second would be a tribute to your mother."

The hunter was silent for a moment, dumbstruck by the amount of thought that Cas had seemingly already put into the name. "Yeah, okay, you've definitely got me beat," he conceded. "What about for a boy?"

"If we have a boy, I think 'Zildar Robert Winchester.' 'Zildar' means 'flight,' or 'he who flies.'"

"Yeah, I like it…" Dean said thoughtfully. "Etharzi or Zildar. It might take me a little while to come up with nicknames, but I'll find a way," he said with a wink.

"Yes, which is exactly why I didn't suggest 'Assiel,' after one of my brethren."

Dean snorted and took a sip of his milkshake. "Yeah, that and the fact that they'd get teased for pretty much their entire life."

Castiel hummed distractedly, and Dean followed his gaze down to the nearly untouched burger on his plate, almost laughing before deciding it was not in his best interest.

"You want this other burger, Cas? I ate so many of those fries I don't know that I can finish it."

Castiel raised an eyebrow, clearly not believing him for a second. But when Dean picked up the burger and began moving it toward Cas's mouth, he gave up resisting and took hold of Dean's wrist, helping guide the food so that it ended up in his mouth instead of up his nose or on his cheek. Dean smiled and cupped the back of Cas's head, still relieved after all this time to see how much his appetite had improved.

"It's very good," Cas said with an affectionate smile, taking the burger from him so he didn't have to hold it up the entire time.

"Glad you think so. Oh, hey," he said as he peered out the window. "It's starting to rain pretty hard out there. Why don't I go pay and pull the car around while you finish that?"

"You don't have to do that, Dean. The rain isn't going to hurt me."

"I know, but I want to. No reason we both need to be soaked. Besides, we don't need you catching a cold or anything right now."

"You're right. I hadn't thought about that," Castiel said sheepishly. "Alright, then. Thank you, Dean."

 

 

The hunter nodded, heading up front to pay the ticket and then sprinting through the driving rain and over to the Impala as fast as he could. He shook the water out of his hair and shivered as he turned the key in the ignition, glad Cas didn't have to go out in this and risk being wet and miserable all the way home.

 _"Etharzi or Zildar…"_ he thought as he pulled the car up to the front entrance and Cas hurriedly slid into the passenger seat. He took the angel's hand, rubbing his knuckles with the edge of his thumb, and sighed contentedly as they made their way back toward the interstate and the warm, dry coziness of the bunker.

_"I wonder which it's going to be…"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the big gender reveal, but before that I'd like to know what you all think Dean and Cas are going to have. Make sure to leave your guess - boy or girl - in your review or PM. :)


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